GOD'S NOT DEAD 3
by 888epic
Summary: On April 8, 2016, Rev. David Hill was arrested for contempt of court. The government had mandates on what could and could not be preached in church, and he refused to present his sermons from the past 120 days for review. What has become of the Pastor and his beloved nation? All will be revealed in the ultimate crossover: God's Not Dead 3! Chapters will be uploaded once a week.
1. Chapter 1: Prisoners

Reverend David Hill laid awake on the cold wooden bunk he called his bed. He hadn't slept a wink all night; he couldn't on such a hard surface. He rolled over onto his side and looked at his digital watch: 4:59 AM.

 _Here it comes,_ he thought. _Three… two… one…_

Suddenly the reveille blared outside. "Wake up!" shouted the prison warden. "It is time to wake up!"

Pastor David groggily slid out of his bunk. He put on his work boots, white gloves and inmate cap and stepped in line with all the other prisoners.

"Camp, atten-SHUN!" the warden shouted. All the prisoners immediately stood at attention, many of them sweating as the warden walked menacingly past them. Nobody would dare mess with someone like Timur. He may be a little on the chubby side (he weighed close to 300 pounds), but the prisoners didn't underestimate him. One time, two prisoners had made a run for the fence on the other side of the field. When Timur noticed, he ran half a mile in about four minutes, then carried those two scallywags underneath his arms all the way back.

Timur was always dressed in a fine police uniform with a tie and a long black overcoat, much complementary to the filthy striped pajamas the prisoners wore. Those who were Christians, like David, had to wear a yellow badge on their rags that read "I HAVE FAITH". While he was always well-dressed, he never trimmed his beard or the long sidelocks that hung from below his service cap. The cap, by the way, was made of light blue wool with a shiny black rim, and had a strange emblem on the front: a silver phoenix holding an Israeli hexagram surrounded by a wreath in his talons, which seemed to gleam in the dim sunlight as the warden passed the pastor.

The warden stopped walking when he had reached the third man to David's left. David made sure to keep his face forward, but his eyes darted to the young man Timur had stopped before.

The young man looked to be in his early twenties. David also saw the bright yellow badge on the man's striped top, showing that he was a Christian, too.

"You Josh Wheaton, son?" asked Timur. The young man nodded.

Timur scowled. "Alright, Mr. Josh, now tell me: would _this_ pathetic, worthless, horrid, meaningless abomination happen to be _yours_?" he said with sarcasm, holding up a Bible with Josh's name printed on the bottom corner of the cover.

Josh fell to his knees. "Please, sir, I had to pay extra just to get my name printed on the cover of that thing!"

Timur threw the book on the table behind him. "I _do not_ _care_!" he barked, pointing at him. "You _know_ that this is the most outlawed book in the country, and you have the _audacity_ to bring this to _my_ prison camp? You are a _dead_ man!" The warden reached into his holster and drew out a pistol. At that, the pastor, feeling all but hopeless for the man, stepped out of line and shouted "I brought it here!"

Timur lowered his pistol and glared at the source of the confession. He slowly walked over to Pastor David. "Come again?" he asked.

David gulped. "H-he's my friend," he stammered. "I was borrowing his Bible when I got arrested, and I kept it with me when I arrived here.

Timur grinned. "Do I look like I was born yesterday? I know what happened: I was about to put this Christian dog out of his misery, and you were jealous. So you made the "Christian decision" that he would have to endure the rest of the torment I'd planned for him and you'd get a free ticket out of yours. Am I correct?"

"Th-that's not accurate at all!" David shouted, furiously but honestly.

Timur laughed and put his pistol back in his holster. "So then, I don't suppose you would mind a little hard labor? Maybe… making gravel?"

Within ten minutes he had all ten prisoners in David's barrack chained together at the ankles and striking rocks with their sledgehammers.

Timur brought a beach chair out of the barracks and a cold glass of dandelion tea. "Put your back into it, ladies!" he shouted. "And no resting!"

David lifted the heavy hammer behind his shoulders and and struck a boulder with all his might. Upon impact he felt the full force of the strike in his hands. Shouting in pain, he dropped the hammer. David remembered playing baseball as a kid, and how much his hands ached just hitting the ball with his bat. But this was like that times a hundred. He had always seen the prisoners on TV shows and movies breaking the rocks with hammers no problem. He had no idea what this actually felt like in real life.

Suddenly he heard a gunshot right by his feet. He looked to the warden, whose pistol had gunsmoke coming out of the barrel. "Pick that hammer up, Christian! These rocks ain't gonna break themselves!"

David lifted the hammer and swung with slightly less force. It wasn't terribly warm; it was still very early in the morning, but all the manual labor he was doing made it feel about ninety degrees out. And the pain; he had it in his back, all right. After just an hour his back felt like it was going to break in half, and they had a whole day of hard labor ahead of them.

In the midst of clacking of hammers against the rocks, he heard the old man next to him cry a little. "This really stinks," the man choked. David looked over at him. "Are you a Christian?" he asked, attempting to comfort him.

The old man sniffed and looked back at him. "Y-yeah," he said.

"Well, do you know this song?" David took a deep breath. "Our God is an awesome God, He reigns from Heaven above with wisdom power and love, our God is an awesome God."

The man smiled weakly and began singing along: "Our God is an awesome God, He reigns from Heaven above with wisdom power and love, our God is an awesome God."

They began striking the rocks in unison to keep the beat of the song. Before they knew it, all the inmates were striking in unison with them.

"When He rolls up his sleeves he ain't just putting on the ritz," David sang.

" _Our God is an awesome God_ ," the crowd of inmates answered.

"There is thunder in His footsteps and lightning in His fists."

" _Our God is an awesome God_."

"The LORD wasn't joking when He kicked us out of Eden

It wasn't for no reason that He shed his blood.

His return is very close so you better be believin' -"

" _Our God is an awesome God._

 _Our God is an awesome God_

 _He reigns from Heaven above_

 _With wisdom power and love_

 _Our God is an awesome God_."

"And when the sky was starless in the void of the night-"

" _Our God is an awesome God_."

"- He spoke into the darkness and created the light."

" _Our God is an awesome God_."

"Judgement and wrath He poured out on Sodom,

Mercy and grace He gave us at the cross.

I hope that we have not too quickly forgotten -"

" _Our God is an awesome God._

 _Our God is an awesome God_

 _He reigns from Heaven above_

 _With wisdom power and love_

 _Our God is an awesome God_.

 _Our God is an awesome God_

 _He reigns from Heaven above_

 _With wisdom power and love_

 _Our God is an awesome God_!"

"SHUT YOUR TRAPS!"

The inmates stopped the beat of their hammers and looked over at the warden sitting in the beach chair. "This is a prison camp, not a church sanctuary!"

David started singing a more fitting song. "Gonna see Miss Liza -"

The crowd answered, " _\- gonna go to Mississippi."_

" _Gonna see Miss Liza,_

 _gonna go to Mississippi._

 _Gonna see Miss Liza,_

 _gonna go to Mississippi."_

And so the men repeated the same eight words until half past ten, when the brunch bell rang.

"Alright, in the cafeteria, you poor hungry souls," shouted Timur. "Five minutes, then it's back to work!"

Two Jewish guards came out of the cafeteria and unlocked the ankle weights binding the men together. Then one got in the front of the line, and one behind, and they marched the men into the cafeteria. The men walked over to the counter (behind which stood the prisoner on kitchen duty) one by one to get their food: a half cup of fluoridated coffee and a thin slice of stale bread. Meanwhile, the two guards and Timur walked inside with their food: tuna melts, french fries, and cappuccinos with whipped cream. They even had packets of ketchup imported from Israel. After the inmates had eaten their bread and drank their coffee, they sat down before them and began eating their food.

"Mmm, these tuna melts are most exquisit, wouldn't you agree, Reuben?" Timur said to the guard on his left, making sure everyone in the room could hear him.

"Indeed, Timur, the sweet tang of the cheese is a most exemplary complement to tuna," the guard replied.

The guard on Timur's left nodded. "And don't you just _adore_ how the pretzel bread _melts_ in your mouth! Ha ha ha!"

David looked longingly at the sandwich in Timur's hand. Timur was fat. He didn't need that sandwich. But David was growing thin after having eaten nothing but moldy bread, jam, and cold coffee for a year. How he longed for that sandwich, and it's crispy warm bread, succulent wild-caught tuna fish, the hot jarlsberg cheese that ran down the side…

Timur caught David's eye. He put two green olives on top of his sandwich like eyes and began making it talk like a puppet. "Hello, Christian. You still look a bit hungry Would you like a bite of me?"

David weakly reached out his hand. "Y-yes," he said. "Please, I'm starving."

Timur pulled back his sandwich puppet and spoke for himself. "Well you don't get one! And do you know why?"

David shook his head. _Why_ , he thought, _why don't I get a bite? Why don't I get my own sandwich? Why am I even in this place? I did nothing wrong…_ Suddenly he remembered: he had failed to produce copies of his sermons from the three months prior to his arrest in direct opposition of court order. _If only I had done what I was told,_ he thought, _I would still be at church. Of course, the government would have control over everything I could and couldn't preach, but it's better than living in a prison camp._ But that still didn't make sense to him. Why would the punishment for contempt of court be being thrown into a death camp?

"I'll tell you why," Timur shouted. "Because we Jews own every last darn thing on the earth! _We_ run the central banks! _We_ decide who gets elected president! _We_ have a worldwide monopoly on all the oil, gold, medicine, and yes, even tuna melts! _That_ is why _we_ eat like royalty and _you_ eat like the vile, low-down, foul, miserable, wretched swine you Christians are!" Timur popped an olive in his mouth. "And another thing -" Suddenly he froze.

"Is there something wrong?" Reuben asked. Timur's throat was doing a gag reflex. The warden dropped his sandwich on the table and grabbed his throat. "I didn't remove the pit," he gargled.

The other guard put down his sandwich and stood up. "I know the Heimlich," he said. "Reuben, go grab a bucket from the kitchen."

Reuben put down his sandwich and ran into the kitchen. The other guard put his arms around Timur's stomach and began pressing up. While all this was happening, David whispered to the rest of the inmates: "Come on, let's get out while the getting's good!"

The guard watched as all the inmates pooled out the door of the cafeteria. "No! Stop right there!" he shouted. But he couldn't go after them. Reuben didn't know the Heimlich maneuver, and if he went after them now, Timur could choke to death. The pastor, who left last, looked the guard straight in the eyes. He picked up all three of their sandwiches and cappuccinos, put them back in the brown paper bag, and ran away with it. "Hey! I was going to eat that!" he shouted.

Reuben rushed into the room. "I found the buck -" he started, before noticing the cafeteria was empty, and the warden was now blue in the face. "Um… Mordecai? Did you send the inmates back out?"

The guard shook his head. "Nope. They escaped while I was trying to save Timur here. And you know what else? I think he's dead."

"NO!" shouted Reuben, rushing to the warden's side. "Officer Timur, please, speak to me!" He slapped him in his cold, chubby face. "Please, say something! Anything!"

Mordecai walked over to the wide open door where the prisoners escaped. "Science damn you Christians," he said.

Meanwhile, Martin Yip, the foreign exchange student whom Reverend David had brought to Christ three years ago, was back in his homeland (where it was closer to 10:30 in the evening) to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. When he had left, the country he had been living in was called China. But ever since the Club of Rome unified the world's nations into the ten kingdoms of the New Order, China and North Korea were collectively referred to as "District 10". The first thing he did when he left the Hong Kong International Airport was drive to Yau Ma Tei market square. In the trunk of his car was a microphone and a travel stereo.

Martin looked at the market square. _Great_ , he thought, _it's busy tonight_.

Martin parked and walked to the middle of the market square. He took out the Bible he had acquired while in the states, cleared his throat, and said aloud, "Can I have everyone's attention?"

Nobody seemed to be listening. He got a few weird glances, but everybody was shrugged and went back to whatever meaningless conversations they were having. Martin frowned. He turned on the stereo, flicked the microphone switch, and spoke again. "Can I have everyone's attention!" his voice boomed across the square. This time everyone stopped altogether and the whole square was silent, save for the soft feedback the stereo emitted.

"Thank you," Martin said. "I was long-term exchange student in America last few year and as I was studying in my college philosophy class, I wonder, 'why am I doing this? to get good job with high pay? to earn money so I could survive rest of my empty life just to die without any effect on lives of others? was there really point in going to college for such vain purpose? no. Reason I went there was to discover truth. And after three long and intriguing speech by my spiritual brother, Josh Wheaton, I discover true meaning of life: Jesus. Jesus is Way, Truth, and Life. And now, without further ado, dear people, I bring you message from LORD!" The crowd gasped and began whispering to each other. Ignoring their soft whispering, he pressed "Play" on the stereo. The stereo then began playing the instrumental of "Message from the Lord".

Martin began singing to it:

 _Do not fight, do not cheat,_

 _Wash your hands before you eat_

 _There is nothing quite as sweet_

 _A message from the Lord!_

 _Be a friend, say your prayers,_

 _Heaven loves a heart that cares._

 _That is why I've come to share_

 _A message from the Lord!_

 _And if you follow God's commands_

 _there will be peace throughout the lands!_

 _You will live long and happy lives_

 _With your sheep, and your kids, and wives!_

Martin entered a chinese restaurant and began singing to the dining customers.

 _Don't eat pigs, don't eat bats_

 _Don't eat shellfish, dogs or cats_

 _Stay away from all of that!_

 _A message from the Lord!_

Martin exitted and began singing to the people outside.

 _Do what's right, don't provoke_

 _Put four tassels on your cloak,_

 _Do not laugh, it's not a joke_

 _It's a message from the Lord!_

He saw a small group of children in front of a school and sang to them:

 _Don't do drugs! Stay in school!_

 _Obey all of YHWH's rules!_

 _Follow them and you're no fool_

 _A message from the -_

Suddenly the music stopped. Martin looked over his shoulder. In the middle of the market square stood a duo of the People's Armed Police Officers in their fine military uniforms. Like the officers in David's district, they also had the same phoenix holding the Jewish hexagram on their hats. One of them had turned off the sound system while Martin wasn't looking. The other had a heavy, semiautomatic rifle pointed at him.

"You stop right where you are!" the officer shouted. "You know Bible most outlawed book in country, and you have _audacity_ to preach to our people? You _dead_ man!"

Just as the officer took aim, another man about Martin's age ran in front of the officer. "If you want shoot this Christian, you must shoot through me!"

The officer laughed. "If you insist; District 10 population need to be reduced, anyway."

Then a woman ran in front of the man. "That go for me, too!" she shouted. "If you want shoot Christian, you must shoot through both of us!"

The officer who had switched off the music whispered in the ear of the officer holding the rifle: "Officer Mailie Cai! Surely you would not fire at woman?"

"Of course I would, Officer Jian," replied the officer. "As long as it means I get to shoot Christian!"

Immediately everyone in the market square gathered in front of Martin. Even the children, who had been standing in front of the school, had gone in the very front of the wall of people.

"Clear area this instant or I will -" Officer Jian put his hand on Mailie Cai's shoulder.

"Hold your fire. These people will die protecting this Christian, and last thing we need is to deal with riot."

Mailie Cai lowered his rifle and began walking away. As he did so, he looked over his shoulder. "Science damn you Christians," he said.

Martin was frozen in place as he watched the officers walk away. It took him about ten seconds to realize someone was tapping on his shoulder.

"My friend, we want to hear more about teachings of Jesus," a man said. "But we cannot do it here. We will surely be prosecuted for it."

"Where is nearest church?" Martin asked.

The man thought a minute. "There is one at Wealthy Shopping Arcade on Tsuen Kwai Street."

"Is there morning service tomorrow?"

"Methinks."

Martin went before all of the people he had just preached to. "If you wish to hear more about my testimony, I would ask you all to join me at church in the morning."

The man held up his hands. "Woah, hold on there. I said I want hear more about what you learn about Jesus; I didn't say I want engage in illegal activity."

Martin walked over to the man with his Bible opened to Acts chapter 5. "It is written: 'We must obey God rather than men.'"

The man scratched his head. "Huh. I never thought of it like that. Fine, I will go with you to church tomorrow morning. Can you pick me up at quarter to ten? I have no car."

Martin took a bookmark out of his Bible. "Write your address here," he said, handing to the man.

The man took a pen out of his pocket and scribbled down his address, then handed it back to Martin.

"Thanks, see you tonight,"said Martin, starting to walk away.

"Wait!" the man said. "What is your name?"

"Martin Yip," replied Martin. "What's yours?"

The man sighed. "Promise not to make fun?" he asked.

"Promise."

The man took a deep breath. "My name is Zhizi. Shen Zizhi"

Martin had to put his hand over his mouth to suppress a laugh. "Well, okay, um… Zizhi… Can I just call you by your surname?"

"I would be most grateful if you did so."

"Okay, Shen, I will pick you up in morning. See you."

David climbed up the wire fence surrounding the field with all the other prisoners from his barack. The razor wire at the top tore their clothes and scratched their skin as they climbed over it, but they managed to make it back down in one piece. When David finally stepped down to the pavement below, he saw a row of five police hovercars.

"There are five vehicles and ten of us," he said. "Two of us should go in each one! Josh, since I know you, you can ride with me."

Josh Wheaton got into the passenger seat of the car David was in. "Do you have a hovercar driver's license?"

David rolled his eyes. "You say that as if we haven't already broken the law today," he replied.

"We may have broken the law, but I don't want to break my neck!"

David ignored what he said and put the keys into the ignition. "Can you believe someone was dumb enough to leave their keys in here?" he said, snickering. Once the engine started purring, he stepped right down on the gas and pushed the control wheel down, causing the car to violently swoop upward.

"WOAH!" they both shrieked. David pulled the wheel up and nearly crashed back into the pavement, then pushed down again until the vehicle was flying horizontal to the ground.

"I guess I need a little more training, huh?" David said.

Josh, looking a bit green, replied with a "huh".

"Say, Josh, could you tap "Hope Springs" into the RDF?" David asked. Josh tapped the name of their hometown into the search bar on the touch screen. "2,359 kilometers -"

"Miles."

"Right. Let's see… 1,466 miles northwest from this island."

David shifted into full throttle and sped over the thick roof of the Cuban rainforest. Meanwhile, back at the prison, officer Mordecai and officer Reuben were just reaching the parking lot. "Where's all our hovercars?" Mordecai said.

"Those Christians better not have stolen them," Reuben said. "I don't have hovercar insurance on mine!"

"We need some backup here." Mordecai opened up the communicator app on his Apple watch and rung up the president.

"White house, secretary Earnest speaking," said a voice.

"This is an emergency," said Mordecai. "I need to speak with the president _ASAP_."

"Hold just a minute." Music played on Mordecai's watch for a few seconds, then the president spoke up.

"Hello, this is Barack Obama, president of District 1," said another voice. (District 1 was what the former American, Canadian, and Greenlandic territories were now called)

"Mr. President, this is officer Mordecai here at Guantanamo Bay. An entire barrack of our Christian prisoners has escaped with all of our hovercars, and given the direction in which the hovercars left, it appears they're headed straight for America."

"Science help us," the president sighed. "I'm going to call the coast guard. If those hovercars come within a mile of the shoreline, our ships will blow them right into the sea."

"Thanks, but could you also tell the air force to send us some more hovercars?" Mordecai asked. "They took all our means of transportation."

"I'll send them right over," the president replied. "But for now, I need your men to keep a close eye on the rest of the Christian prisoners. If any more were to escape, it could spell doom for our glorious New World Order kingdom."

"Will do. Goodbye, Mr. President." Mordecai hung up his communicator.

Martin stood up from his bed and stretched. This was the morning he would attend his first Chinese church service. Once he had eaten breakfast, he drove over to the address Shen had given him. On the way there, he took his first good look at the city since he had left. It was nothing like it was before; the once-utopian city he called was now swarming with police hovercars, all of which had the Jewish hexagram on the back door. All of the traditional red Chinese flags with the five stars in the corner, which Martin had grown accustomed to seeing, were now replaced with rainbow LGBT flags. And, all around town, strange and terrifying images of ancient deities had been erected. Martin was able to identify some of them he learned in school, but many of them he didn't even recognize.

Finally he parked at the apartment building. Martin looked at the address on his bookmark:

Paris Apartment

118 Chung On Street

Apartment 40-D

Martin walked into the lobby and pressed the "UP" button next to the elevator. He waited a few seconds, then pressed it again. Then the doorman said, "Sorry, no in order. Please use stairs."

Martin sighed and began hiking up the stairs. By the time he had reached the fortieth floor, his legs felt like they were about to turn to jelly. He walked over to apartment 40-D and knocked on the door.

"One minute!" said a voice. Exactly sixty seconds after he said this, Shen opened up the door in a coat and tie.

"You are looking quite nice," Martin said.

"Where are your church clothes?" Shen asked, seeming genuinely confused.

Martin chuckled. "Well, you do not necessarily _have_ to dress up for church. Usually only pastor and ushers do so."

"Oh," Shen replied. "Well, it is nearly ten. Let us go downstairs to your car." He then walked over to the elevator and pressed the down button. Then Martin said, "I forgot to mention…"

The two finally arrived downstairs. However, when they went out into the parking lot, Martin's car was nowhere to be seen.

"Eh, Martin?" Shen said. "Where is your car?"

Martin looked around the parking lot, then looked onto the street. Leaving the parking lot was a great tow truck with Martin's car hooked onto it.

"No! Martin, did you park in a reserved space?"

Martin blushed. "Well, perhaps we could walk to church together?"

The two started down the sidewalk. After a minute or so of silently walking together, Shen spoke up.

"So, why did you become Christian to begin with?" he asked.

"Well, it is long story, kind of," he began. "I was without religion growing up. My father, Jesse, always told me that most important thing in life were money, education, and family. But to think that this was all I had to look forward to in life left me troubled. Life felt hollow. Meaningless.

"To find if I really had greater purpose, I took philosophy class in fancy American college. And on first day, Professor Radisson told us 'God is dead', and told us to write that on paper and sign it. I did not question his logic; he said God was useful fairytale in our forebearers' imaginations to explain plagues and crop failures, diseases and disasters, but science and reason now explains that these things are caused by bacteria and viruses, chromosomal disorders and plate tectonics. I wrote 'God is dead' on my paper and signed it with no hesitation, but there was young man sitting near me called Josh Wheaton, who refused because he was Christian. Later that day I asked him why he refused to do what Professor Radisson told him, and he said that God is not dead, and no one should not be talked out of believing in Him just because everybody else thinks they should. So, over next three days, Josh was given twenty minutes in every class to prove God existed. By day three, he had myself, and rest of class, convinced that God exists.

"Those three speeches very much got me interested in learning more about God. I sought help from Reverend David Hill, who answered all my questions about Him. I learned that God created heaven, sea, and earth. I learned He created all living things. I learned that He loves us all so much, He died on cross to save us from our sins, so everyone who believes in Him will have everlasting life."

Shen looked perplexed. "Well, eh, that is all great, but I am not sure if I understand quite yet," he said.

Martin chuckled. "Do not worry, I also had a lot of questions when I first came to God."

"HALT!" said a voice.

Martin and Shen looked up from the concrete below them and saw officer Mallie Cai standing before them.

"Where do you two think you are headed with that pathetic, worthless, horrid, meaningless excuse for a storybook?"

Martin looked at the Bible in his right hand. He was caught. He had no idea what to say now. Gulping nervously, he stammered, "Well, eh, officer, we were just, um, doing…"

Mallie scowled furiously. "You are not going anywhere…" he began, reaching for his pocket, "until you pay this fee of 0.67Ƀ!" He gave Martin a ticket with the number "0.67" on the bottom.

"I-I don't understand, sir," Martin stammered. "What is this?"

The officer took back the ticket. "Is your plate DF 7910?"

Martin nodded. "Yes, sir."

The officer handed the ticket back. "Well, it says here you were parking in reserved parking area, right outside Paris Apartment Complex!"

"Oh, yes, right!" said Martin, feeling much relief. "Yes, I am real troublemaker. But, sir, I have left my wallet in my car, which has been towed."

Mallie laughed "Your wallet? When were you born, the forties? We do not use cash anymore. Just transfer 0.67Ƀ from your account over to state."

Martin scratched his head. "I am sorry, what do you mean? Transfer?"

"Do not tell me," the officer said, taking Martin's hand and inspecting it. "You have no mark?"

"What mark?" Martin asked, looking over at Shen. Shen shrugged, looking just as perplexed as Martin was.

The officer planted his white-gloved hand upon his face. "What do you mean, 'what mark'? Everyone has it! How could you not know what mark is?"

"I was in America, eh, I mean, District 1 four years; I do not know what has been going on here since I left," replied Martin.

"That does not matter!" the officer said. "Everyone in District 1 has it, just as everyone in 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10!"

Shen piped in. "I have lived here in Hong Kong for twenty-one years, and neither do I know of this 'mark'."

"Well, where can I get this mark?" Martin asked.

"Hold on a minute." The officer ducked inside his police hovercar and pulled out a laptop. "What is your social security number?"

Martin told him.

"Okay… Ah! Here you are: Martin Yip, age twenty-one, you currently possess 261,838¥ in your account, equal to 89.65Ƀ. You currently have no criminal background, except, of course, that little "incident" last night, but that is all behind us now, yes?"

Martin gulped. "Yes, I learned my lesson. I was actually running this thing down to the dumpster with my friend Shen." He showed Mallie his Bible.

Mallie chuckled. "Well, it would be hard to find a better place for it." He closed up the computer and slid it back onto the passenger seat of his vehicle. Then he held up a piece of paper. "Now, before I permanently implant your mark, I need you sign this contract."

The contract read:

MARK OF THE BEAST

 _I, _, hereby turn over to the Beast everything I have, including my my soul, in return for which the mark allows me to buy and/or sell as I please forever._

"I do not have pen to sign with," Martin said.

"No, sir, this contract is to be signed with blood, not ink" replied the officer. He pulled out a syringe with a needle at the end. "Now, I need you to hold your arm steady for me."

Martin stepped back "Hey, keep that thing away from me," he said. "I do not do needles!"

Mallie stepped forward. "Sir, I have done this many time. No hurt for more than a second."

"No!" Martin shouted. "Shen, let's go. I have bad experience with needles!"

"I do not know, Martin," said Shen. "I kind of would like to be able to buy and sell products and services as I please. Perhaps this mark could be solution to communism!"

"This mark is solution to everything!" said the guard. "This mark will make you smarter! Stronger! Live forever! Buy and sell whatever you want telepathically! Be like God, except you exist!"

The watch on Shen's watch beeped as it stuck ten. "Oh, dear!" he exclaimed. "Martin, we must really be going! We are late for chu - er - that… thing! Right?"

"Yes, Shen, we are late!" Martin turned to the officer. "I am sorry for this inconvenience, sir, but we have to go! We will get magic mark-thingy later!" He ran down the street with Shen as fast as he could.

Mallie became furious. "One way or other, you will receive that mark, Martin and Shen!" he shouted as the two ran off.

"Hey Josh, hit me up with one of those sandwiches in that bag," said David.

Josh pulled a tuna melt out of the brown paper bag and handed it to David.

"Thanks," David said. "Help yourself to one of those, too. There should be two more in there."

"Pastor, with you driving, I doubt I could eat a bite," replied Josh.

Just as David was about to take a bite, he felt something strike the bottom of the hovercar so hard it made him drop his sandwich.

"Aah! What was that?" he said. He looked over the hood of the vehicle. Below him, the coast guard had laser cannons firing directly at the vehicle.

"Blow those Christian dogs out of the sky!" shouted the Jew captain. "For science!"

" _For science!"_ the admirals repeated.

David swerved the hovercar left and right, trying to avoid getting hit by a laser at all costs. "Darn it!" he said. "Josh, put my sandwich back in the bag. I need to get past coast guard."

Josh picked up the sandwich and put it back in the bag. Then, he had an idea: "Pastor! Try pressing those two red buttons on the tops of the control wheel!"

Having no better options, the pastor pressed the buttons simultaneously with his thumbs. Immediately a bright blue laserbeam shot out of the two barrels fitted underneath the wings of the craft. The laserbeams apparently had hit the engine of one of the ships, because David immediately saw it burst into flames.

"Woah!" he exclaimed. "I wish I had a couple of these babies on my car!"

The captain was furious now. "He's destroyed one of our ships!" he shouted. "Launch the heat-seeking missiles!... of science!

The ships sent rocket ships way up into the sky. David tried to steer clear of them, but they just started following behind his vehicle! He pressed harder and harder on the fuel, but the rockets kept getting closer and closer to his tail. Then he had and idea, too. He lifted the control wheel up as hard as he could, causing the craft to do a nosedive.

"Pastor, what are you doing?!" Josh screamed. "We're about to crash right into the sea!"

The vehicle dove right behind one of the coast guard ships. The missiles, which had been following close behind, landed right on top of the ship, causing it to explode.

Looking into his rear-view mirror and seeing the explosion, he said "Looks like _your_ science is _flawed_." He pushed the control wheel all the way down, causing the hovercar to swoop back into the sky.

"Okay Josh, now you can hand me back that sandwich. I'm starving."

After flying along the horizon a few more hours into the evening, the RDF spoke:

"Arriving at destination."

David grinned. "Hold onto your lunch, Josh. We're coming in for a probably-crash landing." He pulled up on the control wheel. Josh started screaming.

"Aah! Pastor, I feel like I'm floating!"

David slowly eased the control wheel down as they grew closer to the ground. Below them they saw the interstate that lead into Hope Springs. The vehicle struck the pavement with surprising force as he touched down, causing it to bounce way back up. The vehicle bounced along the "runway" until coming to a complete stop.

David stepped outside the hovercar for the first time in hours. He stretched, then looked at the townscape.

"Oh no!" he said. "This must be a mistake! This doesn't look like Hope Springs at all!"

Their hometown was unrecognizable. To call it a town now would be an understatement. It looked like a robotic city with towers so high if David had continued flying he probably would have crashed. Statues of pagan gods and goddesses were on every corner - Baphomet, Molech, Prometheus, and Diana Lucifera, to name a few - and there were LGBT flags everywhere. Everywhere he looked, above doors, in the parks, behind store windows, just rainbow flags everywhere as if they were American flags. There really wasn't much difference between this city and Hong Kong. But there was a city limits sign to their right, which clearly read "Welcome to Hope Springs".

Josh gasped. "Can you believe how much our home has changed since we left?" he said.

"How long were we even _in_ prison?" David asked. "I feel like one of those guys in the movies who gets frozen for like, fifty years, and ends up in the future!" He stepped back into the hovercar. "Come on, Josh, let's get home. It's getting late, and I can't remember the last time I slept in my own bed."

Back in District 10, Martin and Shen had just arrived at the Bread of Life Christian Church to see everyone still worshipping. He noticed that many of the people there were wearing yellow hexagrams that read " I HAVE FAITH " in the middle.

"Great, we have not missed the service," Martin then began singing along to "Days of Elijah", but then Shen tapped on his shoulder.

"Martin, I do not know words," he whispered.

Martin pointed to the screen. "They are displayed up there," he replied.

Shen, though off-key, managed to sing through all the songs in the service without much difficulty. Then the pastor spoke into the microphone.

"Hello, everyone. I am Pastor Wang. And I say this because I see many new faces today. I assume many of you were led here by the testimony of Martin Yip?" Most of the people in the room raised their hands.

"Yes, it is good to see Holy Spirit working through this young man. Anyway, without further ado, Martin, if you would come up and let us hear your testimony?" The audience clapped as Martin walked up to the podium.

"Thank you, Pastor Wang," he said. "When I went into college, I did not know Jesus. I had been raised an atheist by my father, Jesse. In fact, it wasn't until I took a philosophy class at Hadleigh University that I even had even _heard_ of God. My teacher, Professor Radisson taught us what a god is and what it means to be atheist. He then taught us that God is dead, and when I learned that, I identified myself as atheist. But then my classmate, Josh Wheaton, told me that God is alive, and I should not let Professor talk me out of believing in Him. So I found pastor in nearby church to answer all my questions about God. And he told me this:

"God is creator of earth and everything that lives. He created humans, too, and we are supposed to follow His commands. But all humans have disobeyed God's commands in some way or other. And God's punishment for sin is death. But God didn't want us to have to die. So He came to earth in human form and was crucified. His sacrifice paid for all our sins, so if we ask Him for forgiveness, we will not die, but have everlasting life."

A person in the crowd raised his hand. "Do you have question?" Martin asked.

"Yes. You said that God came to earth in human form and was murdered on cross. Does not this mean God is dead?"

"Yes, it does not." Martin replied. "You see, He had to prove in some way that He was God. If He had been human, and would have stayed dead to pay for His sins. But since He lived perfect life, death could not keep hold of Him. So, three days after His death, He resurrected Himself from dead!"

 _SMASH!_

A rock just crashed through the window. The pastor ran over and looked out the hole in the glass.

"Dear God, we are being picketed by Church of Atheists! Everyone, go downstairs!"

Just as everybody started running to the emergency exit of the sanctuary, the violent protesters broke down the door and started running in, waving their pitchforks and torches in the air, along with their picket signs: GOD IS DEAD! TEACH DON'T PREACH! THIS IS A GOD-FREE ZONE! JESUS IS A MYTH! Martin, still behind the podium, had nowhere to flee to. He ducked beneath the stand as stones were hurled at him. A stone knicked the microphone, causing a loud _pop_ to be heard out the speakers. Then he got an idea. He quickly shot up his hand and grabbed the microphone. Then he rushed to a nearby speaker, turned the volume all the way up, and touched the microphone to it.

 _SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE..!_

Everybody in the room started screaming and covering their ears. Some dropped their pitchforks and torches and ell to the floor. "Please! I cannot take it anymore! Make it stop!" one guy yelled.

"My ears are bleeding!"

"I am going deaf!"

"Turn that thing off!"

Martin turned off the microphone and walked back to the podium. Then he turned it back on and said "You want some more?"

" _NO!"_

"Then in name of Jesus, you all leave us alone at once!"

Grumbling, the protesters dropped all their signs and weapons and left the church.

Back outside, officer Jian and Mallie Cai were standing. "We saw angry mob headed this way!" said Jian. "Is everyone okay?"

Furious, an old Asian man walked right up to the officer. "Okay? Those darn Christians nearly killed us with one of their cacophonic-stereo-gizmos!" He turned to the crowd. "These people are dangerous! First they set up secret organizations in opposition to government, and now they have actually attempted to harm us!" He turned back to Jian, wobbling his gnarled finger at him. "Mark my words," he said. "If you do not do something about Christians, there will be uprisings! Our kingdom will surely fall to them!"

Jian turned to Mallie Cai. "Science damn it!" he said. "I thought we were _over_ this whole _God_ thing!"

Mallie Cai shrugged. "Whatever, let us just march in there and shoot up all the Christians," he suggested.

"No," replied Jian. "We must contact our leaders."

Jian and Mallie Cai went into their police hovercar and sped off back to their base. Their base was a steel arch building with a laser cannon tank parked next to it. In the front yard there was a gay flag flying proudly in the breeze. The entire base was surrounded by an electric fence. When they arrived, they quickly ran inside the building.

Jian took Mallie Cai to his office. On his desk there was a miniature Illuminati pyramid with an eye on the capstone. Jian opened the capstone of the pyramid by the hinge, revealing a red button that had been hidden underneath it. He pressed the red button, causing the eye of the capstone to glow red. Suddenly a hole in the floor opened up, and an elevator rose up. The door of the elevator then opened.

"Jian, how long have you had this?" Mallie asked.

"Be quiet!" snapped Jian. "We can't let public know about this. We must keep them asleep."

Jian and Mallie stepped inside the pod. The door closed, and it disappeared beneath the floor. It stopped in an underground lair beneath the military base.

Jian and Mallie stepped into the large circular room. It had grey brick walls and a black and white checkered floor. In the center of the floor was a blood-red pentagram. There was also hover screen on the wall. Jian walked over to the hover screen and turned it on. Then he invited the ten kings of the earth to a group video chat:

Barack Obama of District 1

Jean-Claude Juncker of District 2

Emperor Akihito of District 3

Malcolm Turnbull of District 4

Vladimir Putin of District 5

Nicolás Maduro of District 6

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of District 7

Idriss Déby of District 8

Pranab Mukherjee of District 9

Kim Jong-un of District 10

When the ten kings showed up in their video boxes, the two officers got on their knees and bowed before them.

"Greetings, supreme leaders of the world," they said in unison.

"What do you want?" Barack groggily asked, still wearing his LGBT rainbow pajamas. "Do you even know what time it is in this District?"

"Yeah, ese, it is like, almost midnight here in the west," Nicholas agreed. "What do you want, dawg?"

"My lords, we have problem," said Jian.

"You are telling me!" snapped Abu. "I cannot tell you how many Christians are protesting in my district! There must be at least, like, six!"

"Same here, cuz," Barack replied. "Two a' my officers just reported to me yesterday that all ten of the Christians at Guantanamo took off and are entering my district."

"And that is just what we wanted to talk to you about!" said Mallie. "Here in District 10, the Christians just tried to destroy nice friendly protestors from Church of Atheists! These people must be stopped before they take over world!"

"Science damn it!" Jean shouted. "It's taken us thousands of years to create this one world government, and just when we get it started, a whole bunch people have to be all "Mr. Holier than Thou" and stop it!"

"No," Barack said. " _We're_ going to stop _them_. We've come too far to allow them to stop us. Now I'll tell y'all what: Let's force all the Christians in all our districts to get the Mark. If any refuse, we'll send an officer to their doorstep and have executed right on the spot."

"Why, Mr. President, you are _brilliant_!" exclaimed Jean. "It's no wonder the Council of Thirteen selected you to be the ruler of District 1! You're so full of great ideas, like gun control, abortion, gay marriage..."

"Don't forget ObamaCare," Malcolm piped in.

"Yes, well, I _am_ a pretty smart fella," said Barack, scratching the back of head. "Why don't we all say a prayer, right here over Skype. Everybody bow your heads and close your eyes." Everybody on the line did so. "Father science, you have provided us well in these troubled times. Please help us defeat these menaces. Forgive us for all the times we relied on God instead of on you. And please, help these Christians to grow out of the whole God-thing and submit to logic and reason instead. And everybody said -"

" _Amen,"_ they all answered.

David drove Josh to his house. Josh walked over to his house and saw black and yellow barricade tape stretched over it, like some kids had toilet papered it, but with the tape. The windows had all been boarded shut with plywood and nails, and above the door there was a red sign that read "FORECLOSED". Josh tore the tape off the door and tried opening it, but the door was locked.

"Oh, shoot!" he said. "I wasn't able to pay my mortgage because I was in jail!"

"It's fine, Josh," David said. "You can stay at my place tonight. Then maybe we can see about getting your house back."

David drove Josh over to his own house, but his was also foreclosed.

"Wait a minute, they can't foreclose _my_ house!"shouted David. "I'm a homeowner!"

"Actually, the _state_ is the homeowner," said a voice from right outside the passenger window. David looked past Josh's head and saw Officer Mordecai and Officer Reuben standing outside. "We're also the hovercar owners. Of the one you are currently driving," said Mordecai.

David and Josh looked at each other. Then, they slowly got out of the hovercar. Reuben paced menacingly around them while Mordecai spoke.

"You two have caused _quite_ some trouble. And we're through with all your little games. So…" he reached into his pocket. David and Josh gulped nervously. "... we forgive you," Mordecai finished, pulling out a rolled up sheet of paper. Perplexed, David took the paper.

"What is this?" he asked. "Some sort of token for your forgiveness?"

Reuben stopped pacing and laughed. "A token of our forgiveness? In a sense. Open it up."

David unrolled it and saw that it was a contract. Reuben pointed to a line near the bottom. "All you have to do is sign on this little line, and we'll forgive you. You get your houses back, we get our hovercars back, and we'll just walk away and pretend none of this ever happened. Deal?" He held out his white gloved hand.

"Mind if I read it first?" David asked.

The contract read:

MARK OF THE BEAST

 _I, _,_ _believe in one secret and ineffable LORD; and in one Star in the Company of Stars of whose fire we are created, and to which we shall return; and in one Father of Life, Mystery of Mystery, in His name CHAOS, the sole vicegerent of the Sun upon the Earth; and in one Air the nourisher of all that breathes._

 _And I believe in one Earth, the Mother of us all, and in one Womb wherein all men are begotten, and wherein they shall rest, Mystery of Mystery, in Her name BABALON._

 _And I believe in the Serpent and the Lion, Mystery of Mystery, in His name BAPHOMET._

 _And I believe in one Gnostic and Catholic Church of Light, Life, Love and Liberty, the Word of whose Law is THELEMA._

 _And I believe in the communion of Saints._

 _And, forasmuch as meat and drink are transmuted in us daily into spiritual substance, I believe in the Miracle of the Mass._

 _And I confess one Baptism of Wisdom whereby we accomplish the Miracle of Incarnation._

 _And I confess my life one, individual, and eternal that was, and is, and is to come._

 _ **X**_ ___ _ **_**_

David and Josh looked up from the paper. "Gee, I don't know," David said. "I've never really made a commitment with such _deep_ and _spiritual_ terms since the day I got saved"

"What do you _mean_ you don't know?" said Mordecai. "We're here offering you a ticket to freedom, and you "don't know" if you want to accept it? Do you realize that we can and will arrest you if you don't? I mean, it's your soul! It's not like it's the end of the world if you lose it!"

"Settle down!" said David. "I can't sign it now; I don't even have a pen on me."

"You're not supposed to sign it in ink," said Reuben. "You have to sign it in blood."

Josh piped in. "Well, sirs, it's really late, and we have to go to church in the morning. All we really want is a place to sleep for the night. Can't we just settle this over coffee tomorrow?"

Mordecai and Reuben looked at each other. Then Mordecai took of his hat and scratched his head. "Well, since you didn't give us a straight up "no", I suppose we'll let you camp out in our hovercar for one night. But we want our craft back _tomorrow_. Got it?"

"Yes, officer."

"Alright then. Good evening to you both."

David woke up to the bright sun pouring in through the windshield. He clicked the key forward and looked at the time: 9:30 AM.

"Woah!" he exclaimed. He nudged Josh in the side with his elbow. "Rise and shine, Josh, we gotta head to church!"

Josh opened one eye. "Can't I take I wash up first?" he murmured. "I haven't bathed since the we found out the "showers" back at Guantanamo were for death row inmates."

"If you can find running water in this vehicle, be my guest," David said as he turned on the engine. He then levitated the vehicle and sped down through the metropolis.

"Wow, I'm picking up on this pretty good!" he exclaimed. "If I keep this up, I'll have my license in no time!" He glanced at the RDF. "Hey Josh, check this out. Okay, Google Maps: Hope Springs Church."

The RDF spoke: "In one point five miles, turn left at destination."

"Wow, you don't even have to touch the screen!" exclaimed Josh. "I gotta get me one of these things!"

When they arrived at their destination, they immediately saw that the church had been corrupted as much as their beloved town. The cross at the top of the steeple was upside-down. The windows had been stained red, and the frames had been painted black. A huge roof had been built above the entrance, supported by a bright red pillar on the left and a deep blue pillar on the right. And a gigantic green eye had been painted on the wooden doors.

"This isn't our church," David said. "What kind of church is this?" He looked at the church sign on the front lawn. It read:

HOPE SPRINGS CHURCH OF THE ATHEISTS

STAY ASLEEP

DO NOT QUESTION SCIENCE

OR YOU WILL CERTAINLY BURN IN HELL!

SUNDAY WORSHIP 10:00 - 12:00

"Pastor, I don't want to go in there," Josh said nervously. "This place gives me the creeps!"

"I'm gonna go peek inside," David whispered. Then he tiptoed to the window on the side of the church.

The sanctuary looked completely different than how he left it. The beige carpet had been stripped and replaced with black and white tiles arranged in a checkered pattern. The walls had been painted over with Egyptian murals. The windows, again, were black, and the huge one behind the podium had a giant square and compass on it with a letter "G" in the middle. The podium itself had a picture of Jesus's face on it, but it was covered by a "no symbol". Behind the podium stood the priest of the atheists.

"Greetings servants of science," he began, "Today we have a very special guest here to do my job for me -" The congregation had a laugh together - "Ha ha. Anyway, he's come here all the way from the World State capital, Vatican City. So without further ado, let's welcome Pope Francis!" The crowd clapped and cheered as the old man walked over to the podium.

"Thank you, everybody," he said with his thick Latin accent. "I can't wait to give you all a sermon of our dark lord Sata - I mean, ah, science. But first, let us start with a prayer." Everyone in the congregation bowed their heads and closed their eyes. "Dear God, whom we do not believe in. Let us all not pray to you who does not exist in any rational way. Rather, let us give our praise and thanks to science this morning. Amen."

" _Amen,"_ the crowd answered.

Then the church band came up onstage. The lead singer spoke into his microphone. "Are you ready to give glory to science today?" he asked the congregation.

" _Hail, science!"_ the crowd answered.

"Hit it!" The band started playing "Our God is Greater", but they were singing it all wrong.

" _Science is greater, science is stronger,_

 _Science is higher than any other,_

 _Vaccines are healer, knowledge is power, science! Science!_

 _And if science is for us, then who could ever stop us_

 _And if science is with us, then what could stand against? What could stand against?"_

The lead singer spoke again: "And now a solo by Eric Cartman!"

A fat kid waddled onto the stage with a microphone and started singing.

"I love you, science, I want you to walk with me

I take good care of your baby, call you my baby, baby

You died for my sins, and you know that I would die for you (right?)

What's the matter, baby, you're tremblin' science, baby

Your love! Is my life! You know that without you there's a black hole in my life!

Oh, I wanna believe! It's all right but I get lonely in the night and it's up to you to save me, Science baby!"

"Blessed be your name!"

" _Every blessing you pour out, we'll turn it back to praise_

 _When the darkness closes in, still we'll always say_

 _Blessed be the name of science! Blessed be science!_

 _Blessed be the name of science! Blessed be its glorious name!_

 _You give and take away! You give and take away!_

 _Our hearts will choose to say, science blessed be its name!"_

They sang a few other songs, like "How Fake is Our God", "Amazing Gays", and "Yeezus Paid it All". When they finished the last song, the Pope spoke.

"Okay, children's church, you guys can go downstairs," he said. "Now, if you would all open up your bibles, we can get to the lesson of the day." He held up his copy of _The GOD Delusion_.

David had had a good enough look. "Josh, you gotta come see this -" He looked over to the road. The hovercar was gone. "Oh no," said David.

Martin was lying awake in bed (it was now the middle of the night in his district). He couldn't sleep after what he had just done that day. He knew the protestors were mad. He knew the police were mad. It would only be a matter of time before they did something about it…

Just then his iphone fluttered on his bedside stand. He was so startled he shouted. The phone vibrated again, this time vibrating it's way off the table. Martin groggily picked it up. _Darn it_ , he thought, _now screen cracked_. He tapped the green icon to answer his phone. "Hello?" he said.

"Wake up, Martin," said a voice with a thick African accent.

Martin looked at his phone to see who was calling. It read "Unknown Caller". "I-I am awake," he replied.

"The Matrix has you," the voice said.

Martin sat up in bed. "What? Who is this?"

"They're coming for you, Martin, and I don't know what they are going to do."

"Who is coming for me?" Martin asked, beginning to grow worried.

"Stand up and see for yourself," the voice replied.

"What, right now?"

"Yes. Now. Do it slowly. The window."

Martin stood up as slowly as he could, still gripping the phone in his hand. He slowly made his way to the window and looked down at the parking lot. The police hovercars were there, their lights flashing bright red, white and blue.

The voice spoke again. "I would suggest you get out of there."

"How?" Martin asked.

"Open the window and try to get to the roof."

Martin opened the window and looked down to the pavement. "No way," he protested. "This is crazy. And I am afraid of heights."

"There are two ways out of this building. One is that scaffold, the other is in their custody. You take a chance either way. Are you more afraid of heights, or of needles?"

Martin thought a minute. "Good point," he agreed.

Martin, still wearing nothing but his boxers and T-shirt, climbed out the window and stepped onto the scaffold. Then, using the columns of windows going up the side of the building, he climbed to the roof. _I never thought I would be so thankful to live this close to the penthouse_ , he thought. Finally he reached the roof, the moon and stars now shining down upon him. He had never seen the moon or the stars in his hometown before because of the sky glow. But now the new government had placed regulations on how much light the city could produce at night, because there had been a huge problem with light pollution.

Just then a helicopter descended onto the roof. The SWAT team came out and pointed their rifles at Martin. "Freeze, Christian!" shouted one of them with a megaphone. "You are surrounded! Surrender yourself!"

A figure appeared behind them and, like a ninja, beat them all out cold. Then Martin felt something hit the back of his head and he fell unconscious.

Meanwhile, Josh was at the Hope Springs police department. In the interrogation room, Josh sat in a chair with Reuben behind him and Mordecai sitting behind the desk in front of him.

"As you can see, we've had our eye on you for some time now, Mr. Wheaton," said Mordecai.

"Why is this happening to me? What did I do? I didn't do _anything_!"

"I'm going to be as forthcoming as I can be, Mr. Wheaton," replied Mordecai. "You're here because we need your help. We know that you know a certain individual, a man who calls himself Judpheus."

Josh thought a minute. The name sounded familiar. "You mean Reverend Jude?"

"Whatever you think you know about this man is irrelevant," Mordecai replied. "He is considered by many authorities to be the most dangerous man alive. My colleagues believe that I am wasting my time with you but I believe that you wish to do the right thing. We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start and all that we're asking in return is your cooperation in bringing a known terrorist to justice."

Josh couldn't believe his ears. Jude was the pastor's best friend. How could he be a terrorist? Having not known Jude that well, he had no reason to contest, so he agreed. "Uh, sure. Where do I sign up?" he asked.

"Right here." Mordecai slid the contract across the desk. It was the same contract he had given to David. After reading it carefully, Josh asked for a pen.

"No, Josh, you must sign it in blood, remember?" Reuben said, taking a syringe out of his pocket. Reuben rolled up the sleeve of Josh's prisoner uniform and squeezed his arm. "I'm just going to prick your arm a sec." He poked the needle beneath Josh's arm skin and extracted a little bit of blood. Then he squeezed half of the blood in the syringe into a ballpoint pen. "Here," he said, "sign with this."

Just as Josh was about to sign the contract, they heard a knock on the door. "I'll get it," Reuben said. He opened the door and saw David with his hands on his knees, sweating and panting.

"Wha-?! How did you get here?" Reuben exclaimed.

"You took… hovercar… I ran…" David panted.

"Why?"

David caught his breath. "I'm here for Josh," he replied. "He didn't do anything wrong. He -"

"Well, he did," Mordecai said from the table. "He's just signing that little agreement that would excuse him from it."

David went over to the table, took the paper Josh was about to sign, and stuffed it in his pocket. "Forget about the contract, Josh," David said. "I just got a weird phone call on the way here. It's from someone who calls himself-"

"Judpheus," replied Mordecai, Reuben and Josh in unison.

David was shocked to see that they all knew. "How did you…?"

"He's the most wanted criminal in the world," Mordecai replied. "You and your friend here have apparently crossed paths with this man, and we need your help in detaining him."

David took off his prisoner cap for a second to scratch his head. "Um, no, I don't know anyone by the name of 'Judpheus'..."

"They mean Reverend Jude," said Josh.

"What, Jude?" David said. "That's insane! He'd never hurt a fly."

"Are you going to help us or do we need to detain you, too?" Mordecai asked, standing up from his desk.

"We'll talk to him," David replied. "C'mon, Josh, let's go."

"Oh no." Mordecai and Reuben drew their disintegrator pistols. "You're not slithering out of this again, you Christian scum. Nobody leaves this room until you both sign that contract."

"We'll sign it later, okay?" said Josh. "Just put the handguns down."

"Look around, kid," said Mordecai. "This ain't America anymore. This is the New World Order. And in this world, you're not the ones to be calling shots. _We_ are. Now sit down, sign the contract, and take the Mark, or we'll blow you right out of your socks."

Just then, they heard another knock on the door. "Oh, for the love of science!" shouted Reuben. "Mord, don't take your eyes off these two. I'll get the door." He opened the door, and he immediately fell to the floor out cold.

"Reuben?!" Mordecai shouted, dropping his pistol on the table. He rushed over to Reuben. "Who did this to you? Wake up, Officer R!" Then a black figure rushed up behind Mordecai and knocked him out, too. Before Josh and David even had time to react, they felt cold, gloved hands cover their mouths and needles press into their backs. They tried to scream, but no sound came out, and before they knew it, they were fast asleep.

Martin woke with a start. The first thing he noticed was his mouth was covered by an oxygen mask. He sat up on the foam mat he had been laying on for who-knows-how-long and looked around the tunnel-like room he was in. It was cylindrical, with chrome metal walls and glowing fluorescent tubes lining the ceiling. _Where am I?_ thought Martin. _What am I doing here?_ On the mat right next to him he recognized Reverend David and Josh Wheaton, both of which also asleep and were wearing oxygen masks. But why were they wearing prisoner uniforms? Martin leaned over and shook them both awake.

"Wake up, please," he said.

David stirred a little and took off his mask. He rubbed his eyes and looked up at Martin. "M-martin Yip?" said David. "Is that you?"

"Has been while since we last saw each other, yes?" replied Martin. "Why are you wearing striped pajamas?"

David looked at his clothes and shrugged. "I guess I'm just a troublemaker," he replied. "Why are _you_ wearing _those_ pajamas?"

Martin looked at his own clothes and realized he was still wearing nothing more that his underwear and T-shirt. "I am from another time zone," he replied, sharing a laugh with David.

Martin cleared his throat. "Ahem. Pastor, this is no time for joking. We have no idea where we are, and Josh is still sleeping."

Just then, Josh woke up and took off his mask. "Ugh," he groggily groaned, "what's so funny?" He looked up at Martin. "The Chinese kid? What's he doing here?"

Martin scratched his head. "I have no idea!" he said. "That's what Pastor and I try to find out!"

The three of them helped each other onto their feet. "There's windows lining this room," Josh pointed out. "They could give us a clue as to where we are!"

David walked over to one of the rows of windows and stood on his tiptoes to see outside. He was shocked to see the great blue sky with a chaotic sea of clouds rushing by underneath. "Come look at this!" he shouted. "We're in the sky, and we're moving!"

Josh and Martin rushed over and looked out the window. "Are we flying?" asked Martin.

"I guess," said Josh. "How did we get way up here?"

"Hey guys!" David said, now on the other side of the room. "There's a door here! Let's go!"

The trio went through the door and found themselves in a rectangular room with a semicircular table in the middle. The table had an azimuthal equidistant map of the entire world on it, with the north pole in the center and Antarctica surrounding. Standing around the table they saw a few familiar female faces: Amy Ryan, the woman who had been miraculously healed from her cancer; Ayisha Sittu Khan, the college Muslima who had converted to Christianity in disobedience to her father; Mina Oliver, the late Professor Radisson's ex-girlfriend; and Grace Wesley, the teacher who had to deal with a lawsuit for quoting the Bible to her class. Standing on the other side of the room, facing Josh, David and Martin was a tall black man in a suit and a trenchcoat, his eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses.

"Good morning," he said in his thick African accent. "Welcome to the revolution."

"Jude?" said David. "Is that you?"

"My name is Judpheus," he replied. "This is the Tribulation Force."

"Jude, I know it's you. Take off that stupid disguise."

Jude took off his sunglasses. "You are really screwing my vibe here, Pastor," Jude replied. "I am trying to be all, how you say, 'cool' and 'edgy'."

"Jude, we want some answers. Why'd you kidnap us? What kind of vehicle is this? And why are you wearing that disguise?"

"There is no time to explain, Pastor. Did you take the Mark?"

"The Mark?" the pastor said. "That thing they were going to shoot me if I didn't take it? Yeah, I was about to, but then I blacked out and wound up way up here! Why are we in the sky? Did they shoot me? Am I in heaven now?"

"You are on my airship," replied Jude. "This is the base of the Tribulation Force."

David scratched his head. "I have no idea what you're talking about. Since when have you been able to afford an airship?"

"A lot has happened since you were arrested, Pastor," Jude replied, turning his back toward David. "It all started the day you were arrested. You weren't the only pastor locked up in Guantanamo, David. Every single pastor who refused to turn in their sermons was arrested. Christians from all over the country started protested, claiming you all were arrested simply because you were Christian, not because you did anything unlawful. A movement was started called "Christian Lives Matter", and it was all funded by a Jew by the name of George Soros."

"But George Soros isn't even a Christian," said Josh. "How could he fund an organization protesting for Christians?"

"George Soros is a troublemaker," Mina piped in. "He was in on the atheists' New World Order Agenda. In order for the atheists to conquer America, they had to divide it first. _ORDO AB CHAO_ ; that's their slogan."

"It started with just angry Christians planning protests on Twitter," Jude continued, "but it escalated. Some crazy protesters in Ferguson burned down more than a dozen buildings, injuring at least sixteen people. The police became involved and arrested all the protesters.

"The high priest of the Church of Climatology, conspiracy theorist Al Gore started spreading his theory that the Christians were a terrorist organization that had infiltrated the U.S. government, and their protests were their attempts to overthrow it. President Barry So - I mean, Barack Obama found out about this and decided to ignore all the terrorist threats in the Middle East to deal with the one allegedly already in our country.

"The president declared war on the Christians. A war broke out lasting little more than a month, resulting in the destruction of the U.S. capitol and the collapse of the U.S. economy.

"The U.S. had always been more than a country. It was the bond that held every country in the world together. Now that bond was gone. The world fell into chaos, just like the atheists had planned. The United Nations, now called the United Atheist League, rose up and unified all the countries as one sovereign state, divided into ten regions, each region ruled by one of their ten puppet kings. Those kings were: Barack Obama of District 1, Jean-Claude Juncker of District 2, Emperor Akihito of District 3, Tony Abbott of District 4, Vladimir Putin of District 5, Nicolás Maduro of District 6, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of District 7, Idriss Déby of District 8, Pranab Mukherjee of District 9, and Kim Jong-un of District 10.

"This New World Order had a one world government; it's capital being Vatican city. It had a one world economy, it's currency being coin. And it had a one world religion, too: Atheism. Anyone who swears allegiance to another government, uses a another currency, or practices a religion other than atheism is to be arrested. To make sure the people would use coin and _only_ coin, the Federal Reserve stopped producing paper money. From now on, money could _only_ be processed digitally. And to further their goal, the False Prophet we know as Pope Francis issued something called the "Mark of the Beast" to be printed on everybody's right hand or forehead. This thing was more than just some tattoo that showed everyone whom you've sworn allegiance to; it was a device that allowed you to make coin transactions with a _thought_! It also gave people super speed, super strength, super intelligence, basically turning them into gods! Where do you think they could get that kind of technology?"

David had a perplexed look on his face. "Back up a minute," he said. "All of this happened while I was in _prison_? I wasn't even there for a year!"

"Devils!" Jude shouted, turning back toward them. "The atheists are in communication with the dark lords! For millennia they have been communicating with them, and now the line between their world and our own has nearly diminished! Don't you see? We're living in the Eighth Kingdom that was prophesied in Revelation! If we don't do something now, the Antichrist will come and bring a thousand years of darkness upon the earth!"

"Well I think you're crazy," David said. "But the whole world has been crazy since I was arrested. My question is, why should I care? God will protect us."

"Because," Jude replied. "If the Antichrist takes over the world, that means no more tuna melts!"

David's expression sank. "Wait, what?"

"I said, if the Antichrist takes over the world, no more tuna melts!" Jude exclaimed.

"This is bad," Jude stammered, caressing his head in his hand. "We gotta stop this! I can't live in a world without tuna melts!"

Martin shook his head. "He _is_ crazy, Pastor."

Jude looked at Martin. "Ha, you'll see who's 'crazy' when all this happens."

"Pastor Jude," Martin began, "do I look like I was born tomorrow? You expect me believe Antichrist will take over world and stop us from getting tuna melt? You have no proof!"

"But it's all written in the Bible," Jude took a Bible off the table. "Read for yourself; in Revelation chapter 17."

"You just fooling with me!" replied Martin. "Revelation no have that many chapters probably! I'll believe it when I see _real_ evidence!"

 _FWASH!_

Just then there was a bright flash in the middle of the room, right over the table. All of a sudden there was a creature standing on top of it. The creature was a little more than three feet tall; it had silver fur with white fur on it's chest surrounding it's neck. It had with yellow eyes and tan skin. It wore white gloves with cyan circles with lines sticking out of the bottom leading to golden bracelets accented in cyan. On it's feet were boots are of a similar fashion with a red gem set in gold. The rest of it's boots were navy blue, white and cyan. It had two large spines at the back of it's head, while at the front of it's forehead there were five distinct spines in the shape of a fern in front of it's pointed ears. It was surrounded in a cyan aura, and it was holding a yellow gem.

Everybody in the room was shocked. "Ah! What is that thing?" Josh exclaimed.

David jumped back. "It looks like a big porcupine!"

The only one who wasn't terrified was Ayisha. "Oh. My. _Allah_." She covered her mouth. "I don't know what that thing is, _but it's the most adorable thing I've ever seen_!"

The creature spoke. "My name is Silver the Hedgehog. I've come to your time to save the future."

"This is incredible," Amy said. "A talking mole!"

"Yeah, but I really wish he wouldn't stand on the map table," grumbled Jude. "That thing wasn't cheap!"

Silver looked down. "Ah… Sorry about that." He hopped down off the table. "So far I can only control the time I arrive in. I haven't quite got the location down-pat."

"So you are from another time?" Martin asked. "Where? I mean, when?"

Silver began, "My time is a dark and terrible place, two hundred years in the future. Something happens during this period that results in it's destruction. Two mysterious beings known as the Antichrist and the False Prophet show up and set up a one world government. The first thirteen years of their reign goes great, but then a great war breaks out. It lasts twenty-seven years, and the world is destroyed. So, I went back thirteen years before the war began to prevent my future from happening."

"You're a little late," said Josh. "Our friend here was just telling us the one world government's already started!"

"But, as I was saying," Jude started again. "it's not _too_ late! If we can stop the atheists, we can prevent their messiah from coming!"

"But if we don't," Silver replied, "and the Antichrist takes over, he will be unstoppable."

David walked up to Silver. "Hey, uh, Silver, are there tuna melts in the future?"

Silver looked up at him and frowned. "What's a tuna melt?" he asked.

David fainted immediately. Josh kneeled down and tapped him. "Pastor? Pastor! Are you okay?"

Jude picked up his shoulders. "He's fine, let's just move him back into that room you guys were sleeping in."

Josh picked up his legs and they moved the pastor back into the other room. Then Ayisha ran up to Silver. "Seriously, you're so cute, I think I'm gonna die. Can I _please_ pet you?"

Silver's cheeks went red. "Um, well, sure, I guess…"

Ayisha squealed with joy and started stroking Silver across the head. Then she started stroking his chest. "Wow, you're like, _so_ soft!"

Martin looked at Silver. "I guess Pastor Jude was right," he said. "The future really does get destroyed by Antichrist."

Silver nodded. "The inhabitants of my time say he was prophesied to bring a thousand years of darkness to my world. I can't believe I'm only on year two hundred!"

"About that, Silver," Martin began, "How did you get back to this time in first place?"

Silver handed him the yellow gem he had been holding. Holding it in his own hands, Martin saw that it was cut in a hexagonal shape. "See that? That's called the Time Stone. To use it, all you have to do is hold it and think of the time and place you want to go to. But you gotta be really focused on it, or you might mess up like I did, appearing in on your guys's table."

"That simple, huh?" replied Martin.

Silver nodded. "Yup, and there's six more just like it. Legend has it that if you collect all seven, you can -"

 _FWASH!_ Martin was gone. Ayisha took her hands off Silver. "Where did he go?" she asked.

Silver replied, "I think the real question is _when_."

Martin blinked away the dark spots from the bright flash. He immediately wished he hadn't, because he was horrified by what he saw. He was standing in the ruins of his hometown, Hong Kong, two hundred years in the future. The sky was a blanket of black clouds blotting out all sunlight. The buildings had crumbled, some had even fallen over. The streets had huge cracks in them, going all the way down to the glowing magma in the earth's mantel.

"If I had any doubts before," Martin said, "I have none now. I want out of here."

 _FWASH!_

Martin was once again standing on Jude's airship in the present. "There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home…" he murmured.

Grace Wesley stood. "What happened to you, Martin? What did you see?"

Martin gulped. "Future worse than I thought. I saw my hometown. No good. Also I found Holy Grail." He tossed an old metal cup on the table.

"How did you get this?" asked Mina.

"I take few detours before coming back," replied Martin.

"Give me that!" shouted Silver, swiping the Time Stone from Martin. "Time travel is very dangerous unless you're an experienced time traveler like me!" He turned to the others. "Guys, listen. We need to stop the atheists before their messiah comes and ruins my future!"

"Indeed," replied Jude, walking back into the room. "And I know just how we are going to do it. We need to split up and assassinate each of the ten kings."

"Are you crazy? We can't do that!" shouted Josh. "Exodus 20:13 says: 'Thou shalt not kill'. Besides, there are ten of them and only nine of us."

"The kings have become part of the Beast. They are the enemies of God now, so they're okay to kill. But if you're worried about not having enough people our side, allow me to introduce you to our pilot. Misrab! Come out and meet our newest members!"

An Arabian man with a beard walked out of the cockpit and into the room. Recognizing him, Josh said "Hey, aren't you Ayisha's dad?"

"I am," replied Misrab, through a thick Middle-Eastern accent. "And much as I despise my disgraceful daughter for worshipping a mere human such as _Isa_ , I despise the atheists far more. And I want to stop _Al-Masih ad-Dajjal_ from taking over the world as much as the next guy."

"So you're going to help the Tribulation Force? How?" asked Mina.

"I will be dropping you all off at your destinations," replied Misrab. "Then I will fly to my destination, where I will do _Istishhad_ , the ultimate sacrifice."

Ayisha went white. "No… you don't mean…"

Misrab put his hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry, my daughter, but it's for the best. _Allah_ will surely reward me."

Ayisha hugged her father. "Please, Daddy, don't do this…"

"What does John 15:13 say, Ayisha?" said Jude.

Ayisha, starting to tear up, sniffed. "I… I don't know. What?"

Jude opened up the Bible to John 15. "'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.'"

Misrab stroked his daughter's hair. "Yes, and who needs friends anyway when you have seventy-two virgins, eh?"

"I guess you're right, Daddy," Ayisha replied. "I don't care if you kill yourself to save the world, but please, please, _please_ promise me one thing before you do."

"Anything, daughter."

Ayisha looked up at him. "You _must_ ask _Isa_ for forgiveness! You can't get into _Jannah_ unless you do! If you die in this world, I want to see you in the next one!"

Misrab shook his head. "To do so would commit blasphemy. If I ask _Isa_ for forgiveness, like you did, then neither of us will receive eternal life. As it is written, 'who can forgive sins but God alone'."

"But _Isa_ _is_ God!" said Ayisha. "He's the king of kings! He lived a perfect life and died on the cross to pay for our sins!"

"And what did the great prophet Muhammad say about 'the king of kings'? It is written 'the most awful name in _Allah_ 's sight on the Day of Resurrection will be that of a man calling himself 'the king of kings'."

Ayisha kneeled before her father. "Please, daddy, the Day of Resurrection will be the worst day of your life if you don't do it!"

Misrab sighed. "I promise you I'll _consider_ it, okay? But if I do and we both end up in _Jahannam_ for becoming Christians, I'm going to say 'I told you so'."

Ayisha stood up and hugged him again. "Oh, thank you, Daddy, _thank you_!"

Silver looked up at Martin. "What the heck are they talking about?" he asked.

Martin looked down at Silver. "Have _you_ ever asked Jesus for forgiveness?"

Silver looked perplexed. "Who?"

Martin took Silver by the hand. "Come on, Silver, let us sit down somewhere together. I would like to tell you about the Lord Jesus Christ."David found himself in the ruins of his hometown, Hope Springs. The sky was dark. All the buildings were destroyed, and there was lava everywhere. In the sky he saw a devil in a dark aura, and it was surrounded with tuna sandwiches. It spoke with a low, demonic sounding voice:

"Yes… I have conquered the entire earth… and now all the tuna melts in the world are MINE! ALL MINE! MWAH HA HA HA HA HA!"

David fell to his knees, crying "NOOOOOOO!"

Suddenly he was in the room back on the airship, laying down on a mat. His heart was beating very fast, and he was covered in a cold sweat. After getting back on his feet, he stumbled back into the map room.

"Oh, I am glad you are awake, Pastor," said Jude. "We were just planning our attacks on the ten kings!"

"Wait, what?" said David. "We're attacking the kings?"

"That's right," replied Grace. "I get to assassinate Obama!"

David saw Misrab in the room. "Hey aren't you -"

"Yes, I am Ayisha's father," Misrab interrupted.

"Whatever." He turned back to Jude. "What's my assignment, general?"

Jude looked at his clipboard. "You are going after Jean-Claude Juncker of District 2. He's an old man, so he should go down pretty easy.

"Okay, Josh, you kill Emperor Akihito of District 3. Mina, you got Tony Abbot of District 4. Amy, you got Vladimir Putin of District 5. Silver, you got Nicolás Maduro of District 6. I got Idriss Déby of District 8. Ayisha, you got Pranab Mukherjee of District 9. Martin, you got Kim Jong-Un of District 10. And after you drop all them off, Misrab, you will fly to District 7 and crash my airship into ASIS's capital, Baghdad. Any questions?"

David raised his hand. "What's this 'ASIS' you speak of?"

"Oh, right. While you were in prison, ISIS formed an alliance with the United Atheist League and changed their name to the 'Atheistic State of Iraq and Syria', or 'ASIS'.

"Now if there are no more questions, let's go and kill us some atheists!"

(TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 2)


	2. Chapter 2: Checkmate

Michael Moore sat cross-legged in the middle of the tatami floor, doing a transcendental meditation.

" _Aumgn. Aumgn. Aumgn…_ " he said. Suddenly he stopped _aumgn_ -ing. "Oh, no," he said. "This is not good."

Chanty Binx hurried to the meditation room. "What is it, Master Michael?"

Michael opened his eyes. "It seems there has been a disturbance in the social justice balance of the universe."

Chanty's eyes grew wide. "A disturbance?" she repeated.

"Yes." Michael nodded. "It seems that a certain demographic has been suffering intense persecution over the last year."

"But which one?" Chanty asked.

Michael shook his head. "I do not know," he replied. "I must check my lapto - I mean, my crystal ball." Michael walked over to his desk and went on the internet.

"It looks like… the Christians!"

Chanty rushed over to see, but Michael stopped her.

"Come no further, Mistress Chanty," said Michael. "Only a warrior of the highest level is worthy to gaze upon the crystal ball."

Chanty scratched her head. "Why is that, Master Michael?"

"It's none of your business," replied Michael, closing thirty tabs on his computer. "It's… private… stuff."

Later that evening, the S.J. Army assembled at S.J. headquarters in New York City. Michael was the guest speaker.

"Hail, Warriors. I have gathered you all here this evening because we are about to enter into war," he said into the microphone.

"Triggered," said a voice from the audience.

"As you can see by this chart, social injustice is on the rise." Michael pressed a button on his remote, and the chart appeared on the two screens above him:

The audience gasped when they saw this. Michael pushed his glasses back in place. "Yes, brethren, this the world we live in. The atheists are now in more privileged than every other religion combined. And notice -" he pressed a button to zoom into the chart, "-this _tiny_ purple sliver right here represents the Christian demographic. It hardly even registers on my chart. But with your help, we can make a difference. We must take from the more privileged and give to the less privileged."

The audience roared. "Generals, assemble your armies. We will settle this matter the same way we have done since the dawn of time: With raised fists, picket signs, and really loud voices! We will rally before the ten world capitals, where we will demand equality for everyone!"

When the airship arrived in Brussels, Jude turned on the cloaking device, which made the entire ship invisible. "To keep our profile low," Jude explained. "We can't let the atheists know about the Force." Then he handed David an object that looked like a writing utensil. "This looks like a pen, but it is actually spying equipment. If you hear our enemies discussing anything that could be of use to the resistance, just press the button on the top. Press it a second time to pause the recording." Then he turned to the rest of the group. "Everybody, if you look on the table over there, you will find a pile of special watches. These watches have communicators installed in them, but they won't get good bandwidth from long distances like you will. David nodded and jumped out the door of the airship with a time bomb strapped to his chest. He landed right on top of the roof of the European Parliament. So, he opened up an air vent and started slithering through the duct. Finally, when he thought he reached a spot that would ensure maximum destruction, he unstrapped the bomb and pressed the button. It started ticking backward from thirty minutes.

 _Good_ , David thought, _Now I just need to get as far away from the crime scene as possible_. He continued down the air duct until he found another vent, which was just above the room of the European Commission.

 _Woah_ , he thought. _I could get some useful information for the resistance while I'm here_. He took out the recording device Jude had given to him and pressed the button, all while listening to President Jean-Claude Juncker speaking before the commission, in his Luxembourgish accent.

"And with that, I would like to discuss what I believe to be the greatest threat the United Atheist League has ever faced: organized religion. Namely, the Church.

"Despite our many attempts to silence them, to get them to abandon their petty childhood fantasies and pursue the arts and the wisdom the Tree of Knowledge has offered us, they have experienced the greatest revival within the last century. You just heard about that man in District 10 who tried converting all those poor, innocent people to his bloodthirsty religion a few days ago. Do we want such a thing to happen here in Brussels?"

The audience booed.

"Do we want to see this happen in District 2?"

The audience booed louder.

"Do we want to see this happen on planet Earth?"

The audience booed even louder; this time some people stood and knocked chairs over. One person threw a chair against the wall, causing the ceiling to shake a little. David, kneeling on the vent, managed to catch his balance, but nevertheless, the vent came loose, and he fell through.

 _THUD!_

David landed right on top of the table. President Jean-Claude gaped at him, to which David replied,

"Uhh… Happy Birthday?"

Jean-Claude looked at David's chest, where the yellow hexagram that said "I HAVE FAITH" was. When he saw this, he pointed and hollered, "A spy! Somebody get him!"

The entire commission dove toward David. Luckily, in the midst of the chaos, David was able to give them the slip. He started running toward the door when Juncker slammed a red button on the table. Red siren lights started flashing all over the building, as a robotic voice repeated on the intercom, "INITIATING LOCKDOWN SEQUENCE."

Steel bars fell from the ceiling in front of the door, trapping David inside. Then Jean-Claude pointed at him and laughed. "Ha!" he said. "Now you're trapped! Just wait until the police find you; they'll have you tried for high treason!"

"Yeah, but aren't _you_ trapped, too?" said David. "When the building locks down, that means _no one_ can escape."

Jean-Claude chuckled. "Well, I _suppose_. But I don't mind waiting the hour it will take for the police to find us."

David's expression sank. "It will take a whole hour?!" he exclaimed. "You fool! You've doomed us all!

Jean-Claude was perplexed. "Uh, what do you mean?"

"Before I, uh, _dropped in_ your little meeting, I kind of planted a bomb in the building," explained David.

"What?!" Juncker shouted. The whole commision started to panic, shouting "Where is it?" "How do we disable it?"

David grinned. "I'll tell you if you promise to let me go."

"Fine," Jean-Claude grumbled. "Nobody touch the spy. He has agreed to help us."

"Okay, so what do we do?" one commissioner asked.

"Alright, I need you to go down on your hands and knees," said David. "Right under that vent."

The commissioner did so. Then David said to another one, "Alright, now you kneel on top of him."

The second commissioner climbed on top of the first one, his hands on the shoulders and his knees on the back. Then David said, "Perfect. Now let me climb on top of you two." David stepped on top of the two men and pulled himself up through the vent. He crawled through the air duct until he found the bomb again, which had only about ten minutes left on the timer. _Aw, man_ , he thought. _I don't have much time_. He quickly picked it up and carried it back over to the vent. "Here," he called, "catch."

"No! Don't drop it!" Jean Claude screamed. But it was too late. The bomb was already falling from the opened air vent toward the floor. Jean-Claude made a dive for it and caught it. "You imbecile!" he shouted. "What are you trying to do, blow us up?!"

"Actually," Dae replied, "that's exactly what I'm trying to luck figuring out which wire to cut to disable the bomb."

"Wait, you mean you don't know it?" a commissioner asked.

David shrugged. "Nope. And I'm not willing to take the risk. You locked yourself as well as the bomb inside the building, so you've only yourself to blame for that. Ta-ta." He disappeared into duct again.

"You welcher!" Jean Claude yelled. "Get back here!"

But David was already on the roof again. He could see the bomb squad speeding toward the building, but that didn't matter. They would never be able to break inside in time to disable the bomb. He climbed down the side of the building and started running as fast as he could. Then a police officer stopped him. "Hey!" he shouted. "Do you know anything about the suspected spy who infiltrated this establishment?"

"Never mind that!" David shouted. "Just disable the bomb!" Then he ran off again.

When he had gone about a mile away from the building, he heard a loud bang, followed by hundreds of screams, coming from behind him. He stopped running and turned to see smoke coming from the area he had run from and watched as firetrucks and ambulances speeding toward the smoke. David humbly fell to his knees and cried, "Oh God, what have I done?"

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen of the Court," said the Honorable Judge Robert Stennis. (It was morning in Little Rock while it was afternoon in Brussels, where David was.) "Calling in the case of the United Atheist League versus Barack Hussein Obama. Are both sides ready?"

"Ready for the State, Your Honor," said District Attorney Peter Kane. (Peter Kane had been the attorney representing the American Civil Liberties Union when Grace Wesley had been on trial for preaching her religion in school.)

"Ready for the Defense, Your Honor," said Defense Attorney Tom Endler. (Tom Endler had been the attorney representing Grace Wesley when she was on trial for preaching her religion in school.)

"Will the clerk please swear in the jury?" said Judge Stennis. (Robert Stennis had been the judge when Grace Wesley was on trial for preaching her religion in school.)

The county clerk, Mark Whitman Johnson, stood before the jury. "Will the jury please stand and raise your right hand?" he said. "Do each of you swear that you will fairly try the case before this court, and that you will return a true verdict according to the evidence and the instructions of the court, so help you, Science? Please say 'I do'." The jury did so and sat down.

"Your Honor and ladies and gentlemen of the jury," said Peter, "the defendant has been charged with crimes against science. The evidence will show that he was in possession of a multitude of religious objects, including a silver crescent moon and star pendant, a copy of the Quran, and a portrait of Muhammed. Furthermore, the defendant has, on multiple occasions, been seen entering mosques. The evidence I present will prove to you that the defendant is guilty of theism in the first degree. The law states that first degree theism is committed when a person willfully and intentionally practices an organized religion that recognizes a god, divine creator, or omnipotent being of any kind. And this is exactly what the defendant has done. Therefore he is guilty."

"Your Honor," said Tom. "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. During this trial you will hear no real evidence against my client. My client may have been found in possession of these religious objects, but no evidence shows that he had theistic intentions at the time he had them. Therefore my client is not guilty."

Grace Wesley was sitting in the jury with a single-shot handgun in her pocket. The judge had given her permission to shoot Barack if he was found guilty. She was ready to do her civic duty.

"The League calls Mrs. Kinney to the stand," said Peter. A stunningly beautiful black woman walked up to the stand to be sworn.

"Mrs. Kinney, what do you do for a living?" asked Peter.

"I am the principal of Martin Luther King Jr. High School," she replied.

"Where were you on Friday, August 18, 2017?"

"I was on my way to the school for a teacher's workshop. We hold many of those in the last few weeks before the school year starts."

"And did you see Mr. Obama on your way?"

"Yes."

"What was he doing?"

"Well, according to the news, he had gone to Little Rock to meet with the governor about -"

"Objection, Your Honor," said Tom.

"Sustained," Judge Stennis replied. "Mrs. Kinney, please tell the court what you witnessed in Little Rock, not what you witnessed on the news."

"R-right," Mrs. Kinney replied. "He was walking into the Islamic Center of Little Rock."

The jurors gasped, and some of them began whispering. Judge Stennis pounded his gavel.

"No further questions, Your Honor," said Peter, sitting down.

"Does the defense have any questions?" said Judge Stennis.

"Yes, Your Honor," said Tom. "Mrs. Kinney, are you an atheist?"

"Objection, Your Honor," said Peter. "That question is irrelevant."

"Overruled," the judge replied, waving him off. "I want to see where this is going."

"Yes," Mrs. Kinney replied.

"As an atheist," continued Tom, "have you ever entered a religious institution, such as a church or mosque?"

"Well, I suppose -"

"Yes or no question, Mrs. Kinney," said Tom. "Please answer 'yes' or 'no'."

Mrs. Kinney sighed. "Yes."

"What institution was that?"

"I attend the Little Rock Church of the Atheists," she replied.

"Allow me to rephrase," said Tom. "Have you ever attended a _non-atheistic_ religious institution, such as a church, mosque, or synagogue?"

"Yes."

"Where was that?"

"Saint Augustine Catholic Church."

"And what were you doing there?"

"I was attending my son Michael's wedding."

"And were _you_ suspected of crimes against science when you entered Saint Augustine Catholic Church, a non-atheistic religious institution?"

"No."

Tom grinned. "And so why then, should Mr. Obama be suspected of entering a mosque, which is also a non-atheistic institution?"

Mrs. Kinney gulped. "I don't know," she replied.

"No further questions, Your Honor." said Tom, as he proceeded to sit down.

"The prosecution may call the next witness," said Judge Stennis.

"Prosecution calls Mrs. Obama to the stand," said Peter.

Another beautiful black woman walked up to the stand to be sworn. Then Peter produced a book covered in designs of blue and gold.

"Mrs. Obama, do you recognize this exhibit?" he asked.

"Yes," she replied.

"What is it?"

"That is my husband's copy of the Quran." The jurors gasped again.

"How long has your husband been in possession of this copy of the Quran?"

"He first bought it at Politics & Prose when we moved to Washington, D.C."

"And for what reason did he purchase it?"

"To read, obviously."

"And how do you know this?"

"Well, when it's late at night we like to sit in our bed together and read our books. I frequently see him reading that very copy of the Quran."

"And what about Exhibit B?" he asked, producing the painting of Muhammed.

"He keeps that on our bedside stand and he kisses it before going to sleep."

"No further questions, Your Honor."

Judge Stennis said, "Does the defense have any questions?"

"Yes, Your Honor," replied Tom. "Mrs. Obama, have you ever read this copy of the Quran?"

"No."

"And so how do you _know_ that your husband is actually reading the content of the Quran at night?"

Mrs. Obama rubbed her neck. "Uh, because I can _see_ him doing it."

"Why don't you flip through the contents of the book to see what he's reading?"

"Uh, okay." Tom handed Mrs. Obama the book. She flipped through it and drew some magazines out. "It's filled with Playboys!" she exclaimed, as the audience gasped again.

"Just as I suspected!" said Tom. "No further questions, Your Honor."

"Does the prosecution have any more witnesses?" said Judge Stennis.

"None, Your Honor," replied Peter.

"Very well then!" Judge Stennis turned to Tom. "Is the defense ready with its case?"

"Yes, Your Honor," replied Tom. "Defense calls the defendant to the stand."

Mr. Obama walked up to the stand to be sworn. Then Tom said to him, "Mr. Obama, what do you do for a living?"

"Uh, I'm the king of District 1," he replied.

"And are you a Muslim?" asked Tom.

"Yes," Mr. Obama replied. The jurors gasped again, and Judge Stennis pounded his gavel.

"Order!" he shouted. "Seriously, this is, like, the fourth time you've gasped! If you need some air, please step outside of my courtroom!"

Tom's expression sank. "O-okay. Um, next question. Do you think Muhammed is, er… hot?"

"Oh, come on!" Peter shouted. "Objection, Your Honor, that question has nothing to do with the case!"

"Overruled," the judge replied. "The evidence you provided was related to Muhammed."

"Well, uh..." Obama replied.

"You're under oath, Mr. Obama. Tell the truth."

"Fine. I'll admit, yes, I _do_ think he's, uh, pretty damn sexy."

"Aha!" said Tom. "So you admit that you don't kiss the picture because you are a follower of the prophet's teachings, but because you secretly have a crush on him!"

"Uh… I guess."

"No further questions, Your Honor," finished Tom. "Or witnesses."

"Are your ready with your final arguments?" asked Judge Stennis.

"Yes, Your Honor," the two attorneys replied.

"Your Honor and ladies and gentlemen of the jury," Peter began, "Based on the evidence I have presented, you can confirm without a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty of theism in the first degree, which is a crime against science, punishable by imprisonment or death. He attended a mosque with the intention of paying homage to a supernatural being. He was in possession of religious objects. And on top of that, he admitted under oath that he _is_ a Muslim. Please do what is right and find him guilty."

Tom came before the jury. "Your Honor. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Before being so hasty to find my client guilty, I would like you to actually take a look at the content of my client's Quran." Tom opened the book up again and read from it. "The Quran tells us that men are superior to women. Quran 4:34: 'Men are in charge of women by what God has given one over the other and what they spend from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in absence what God would have them guard. But those from whom you fear arrogance - advise them, forsake them in bed; and, strike them.'

He quickly flipped through the pages as he spoke. "Even worse than that, it says we should kill all the atheists. Quran 2:191: 'Kill disbelievers wherever you find them. If they attack you, then kill them. Such is the reward of disbelievers.' Quran 3:21: 'Those who disbelieve, promise them a painful doom.' Quran 4:56: 'Unbelievers will be tormented forever with fire. When their skin is burned off, fresh skin will be provided.' Quran 6:70: 'Those who disbelieve will be forced to drink boiling water, and will face a painful doom.' Quran 8:55: 'Indeed, the worst of living creatures in the sight of God are those who have disbelieved, and will not believe.'

"But even worse than this, this book also explicitly denounces our lords and masters, the Jews. Quran 2:85: 'Jews will suffer in this life and go to hell after death.'

"But if you look at these verses from a subjective viewpoint, are they really so wrong to believe? Is it so crazy to believe in an omnipotent being who cares enough about justice that he would punish those who disbelieve in Him?"

Tom threw the Quran on the floor. "Of course! It's completely crazy! Which is why you must find my client not guilty: By reason of insanity."

The jurors left the room. Several minutes later, the foreman came out with a piece of paper.

"Has the jury reached a unanimous verdict?" asked the judge.

"Yes, Your Honor," replied the foreman. "We, the people of Little Rock, Arkansas, find the defendant **guilty** of theism in the first degree."

"I hereby sentence the defendant to capital punishment. And, to add insult to injury, the people of District 1 have decided to replace him with a giant douche. Ladies and gentlemen of the court, meet your new archon, King Donald J. Trump!"

An old man with blond hair and orange skin walked into the courtroom, and everybody cheered for him. Everybody but Grace. What was she to do? Her mission was to shoot King Obama, but he was being replaced by a new king. Was she supposed to shoot King Trump now?

"Ms. Wesely, you may fire when ready," said Judge Stennis.

Grace started to aim for Barack, then shifted her aim to Donald. "Woah! What do you think you're doing?!" the Judge yelled. "Point that at the criminal, not the king!"

Grace aimed at Barack's head again, then changed her mind again. "Last chance," the judge warned. "If you point your barrel toward anybody in this courtroom besides the criminal, I will have you arrested for contempt of court. And attempted murder!"

She was out of luck now. With one last breath she took aim again. And fired her only bullet straight into the skull of the judge.

Josh Wheaton jumped out of the airship into the cool night air (it was around one in the morning in Tokyo) and deployed his parachute. He landed on the roof of Tokyo Imperial Palace. Before climbing inside through one of the windows, however, he couldn't help but to take in the beauty of the view he had of Mt. Fuji and Emperor Akihito's cherry orchard in the moonlight.

He broke through one of the windows and found Akihito sitting on a tatami floor, meditating. His eyes were still closed after Josh had broken in. "Ah, I have been expecting you, child," he said in a thick Japanese accent.

Josh's heart jumped. "H-how did you know I would be here?" he stammered.

Akihito took a deep breath through his nose. "I am able to predict future events by sensing the energies of the universe moving about through the _Śūnyatā_."

Josh scratched his head. "I didn't understand a word of that."

"And," Akahito continued, "because I am a bender of the _Śūnyatā_ , I am also able to manipulate future events in my favor." He took a breath, twice as deep as the one before. " _Kore_ …!" he said loudly. In half a second, he shot to his feet and extended his arms toward Josh, yelling " _O toru!_ " as a wave of blue light energy shot from him. It blew out every single window in the room and sent Josh flying out, landing him in the branches of a cherry tree, scratched up and badly bruised.

Akahito jumped out the broken window of the palace and landed in a tree parallel to the one Josh was in. "I should also mention," he said, "I am a bender of the _Ka_ as well." He held out his hands and created a fireball out of thin air. Then he threw it at the base of the cherry tree, causing the whole tree to be set on fire.

Josh scrambled to his hands and knees and started descending the tree. When he got to the base, he jumped down and took off like a shot. But Akahito had plenty more where that came from. He started throwing fireballs left and right, lighting up the night with all the trees in the orchard, all the while shouting " _Hinotama! Hinotama! Hinotama!_ "

Luckily Josh managed to escape the burning orchard, but Akihito was able to catch up to him using his ninja speed. "Foolish boy," he said. "You cannot evade me. For I am a bender of _all_ elements!" He rose a wall of earth in front of Josh. Josh ran straight into it and fell to the ground, flat on his back. Akihito slowed his run down to a stop and placed his foot on Josh's neck. "How unfortunate," he scoffed. "I really wanted to toy with you a little longer. But it seems now I am only a _step_ away from ending this little game."

His hand shaking, Josh reached into his shirt and pulled out a single-shot handgun. Akihito laughed. "Hilarious!" he cried. "You attempt to stop a bender of the elements using a mere pebble of lead."

"We'll see who's laughing when you have a bullet in your head!" mustered Josh, unable to speak well with Akihito's shoe on his throat.

Akihito wiped a tear of joy from his eye. "You humiliate yourself. Do you honestly think _your_ reflexes can compete with _mine_? Squeeze that trigger. I dare you."

His hands still shaking, he held the pistol up at Akihito's face and tried to squeeze. But at the mere twitch of his finger, Akihito snatched the gun from his hands with the reflexes of a Japanese pitviper. Then he fired it straight up in the sky and threw the gun. "A shot and a miss," Akihito mocked. "It seems you forgot to factor in _wind resistance!_ " Then the wind started to blow around them. It grew stronger and stronger until they were in the eye of a tornado. Akihito picked Josh up by his shirt and threw him into the dust and wind.

Josh had never been so dizzy in his life. The wind carried his body around and around and around until he felt as if he were about to vomit. Then the tornado spit him out, throwing him through the air and landing him in the river. Josh fought to keep his head over the water, but he was weak, and his prison clothes and boots were weighing him down. He soon gave up his breath and sank to the bottom.

Akihito stood on the bank of the river and thrusted his right arm forward. The waters of the river parted in two like a curtain, exposing Josh's beaten-up body lying on the bottom. Akihito walked across the moist riverbed to where Josh was lying. He picked him up by the shirt with both his hands, as a school bully would.

"I am surprised you are still breathing. You should feel lucky. But know this: if I ever sense you or your cursed airship near _my_ palace again, you're death will be legendary." He threw Josh back on the ground. "Crawl back to your master. Tell him that his pathetic little resistance will _never_ be compatible against the Japanese _jinpishugi_."

Josh pointed an unsteady finger at Akihito. "W-we… h-have the p-power of God… on our s-side." he sputtered. "You have only… the power of S-satan."

Akihito guffawed and walked back on top the riverbank towering over Josh's body. "I see!" he cried. "You are one of those people. One of the 'Jesus freaks'. Well, tell me, child, can your God save you from _this_?" He stretched out his arms, saying " _Mizu_ …!" then clapped his hands together, shouting " _Anpāru!_ " Immediately the parted waters crashed back together on top of Josh. Akihito laughed sadistically at the sight and walked back to his palace.

Mina jumped out of the airship and deployed her parachute. She landed on the roof of the Lodge. Her mission was similar to David's: plant a time bomb in the building to kill the district king. In this case, that king was Malcolm Turnbull. She opened up an air vent on the roof and started crawling through the air duct.

After a few minutes of crawling, she found the vent above the bedroom in which Malcolm was sleeping. _Perfect_ , she thought. _I'll plant the bomb right on top of him_. She took off the bomb strapped to her chest and pressed a button, causing it to start counting down. But just as she was about to leave, she looked up to see a huge Sydney funnel-web spider on top of the duct. _Crap_ , she thought. _This is Australia_. She tried to avoid it, but it started to descend down a string of silk toward her head. She quickly ducked underneath and scrambled away from it. A single bite from a Sydney funnel-web, she knew, could kill a human. Then she had an idea. Before the spider landed, she quickly took the vent off the bottom of the duct. The spider continued to descend into the bedroom of King Malcolm, and it landed right on his face. If Mina were lucky, the spider could do her dirty work for her. But she couldn't risk failing the mission, so she left the bomb in the duct before she left.

Once she arrived on the roof again, she climbed down the side of the Lodge. Then she climbed down the side of the Lodge and tried to hurry off the property. But of course, the security was too good to allow _that_ to happen. The burglar alarm went off, and security guards came running out of the building to capture Mina.

"There's no point in running, mate!" one guard said in Australian. "We already called the bomb squad! If we don't capture you, they will!"

It was early evening in the capital of District 5. Amy's mission was to kill Vladimir Putin. She jumped out of the airship, deployed her parachute, and landed on the roof of the _Bely Dom_. She did the usual; she climbed inside through the nearest air duct and found her way to above the room where the Federation Council met with King Vladimir. Then, after planting her time bomb, she took out a recording device similar to David's to listen in to their conversation:

"Hail, brethren," said Vladimir in his thick Russian accent. "We have just received word that there was a great explosion in District 2, which killed the entire District 2 council as well as their king, Jean Claude-Juncker. Intelligence says the explosion was caused by a Christian."

 _David!_ Amy thought. _Oh, God, please let him be okay!_

"Our world empire," Vladimir continued, "can no longer suffer any more losses to these foul excuses for humans and their radical beliefs. So, for your safety tonight, I have added extra security measures to this building." Amy watched him through an air vent as he produced a small remote with a red button and a green one.

"As soon as I press this red button," he said, "all the doors and windows in this building will be locked." He pressed the button. "And just in case somebody tried to sneak in through an air vent…" He pulled out what looked like a TV remote and pointed it at one of the TV screens on the wall (the ones that showed his face larger to the councilmen in the back). The screens showed the inside of two places in the ventilation system.

"I have had surveillance cameras set in every corner of the ventilation system!" he said, and the council applauded.

Amy's heart sank. She knew she was the one caught now. Frantically she tried to find a camera that might see her.

"And if _that_ doesn't work," Vladimir continued, "I ordered the bomb squad to examine every nook and cranny of this building for _any_ signs of a destructive weapon!"

The council applauded again, louder, and this time some even cheered.

Suddenly she faintly heard the echo of a hound barking come from the air duct. Then she heard the voice of a human with a Russian accent:

"He smells explosives coming from this vent! Come on, let us go down and check."

Amy had to get out of there. But she couldn't go back the way she came, or she'd be caught by the bomb squad. All she could do was continue through the duct. But she pushed her luck too far, went around a corner in full view of a surveillance camera.

"Wha -?! A spy!" Vladimir shouted. Then he pressed a button on his watch. "Attention all units! A spy has been detected by camera 4B!"

"Understood," a voice from his watch replied. "One of our hounds just picked up on some explosives coming from that very duct. Our men are crawling through right now to see what's going on down there."

Amy had to pick up her pace. There were already officers crawling in the duct just behind her! She couldn't just wait to find another air vent; the whole building was locked, doors and windows. She had to find a vent leading outside.

"There's the bomb!" she heard someone say.

"But what about the spy?" a voice replied.

"Forget the spy; this whole building is going to go kablooey if we don't disable this bomb."

Amy sighed with relief. That really was a "time" bomb. It just bought her a whole lot of time.

After several minutes of crawling, she finally found her ticket to freedom: an outside air vent. But once she pushed off the vent, she watched it drop hundreds of feet to the pavement below. _Baby steps_ , she thought. She slowly slid her butt over the edge and eased her feet down onto the top of the window frame on the next story down. This could take her all night. She heard the sound of a chopper growing near her. It grew louder and louder until it was almost deafening, then felt a light on her back. She was nearly blinded by the light coming from the front of a police chopper, while an officer from inside yelled with a megaphone, "Freeze, citizen! You're surrounded! There is no way out! Surrender yourself!"

 _It is around eleven o'clock in District 6_

"But Silver, are you _sure_ you do not need a parachute?" said Jude.

Silver the Hedgehog shook his head. "I'm a psychic," he explained. "I have the ability to levitate, see?" A teal aura appeared around his body as he rose from the floor.

Jude clapped. "Well done, Silver! You need to teach _me_ how to do that. Just be careful, okay?"

Silver nodded. Then he flew out of the airship and down to the front door of the Federal Legislative Palace, where the district king, Nicolás Maduro, was meeting with the National Assembly.

Silver burst through the door of the assembly room and pointed at King Nicolás, who was sitting on the bench at the head of the room. "I've been looking for you, King Nicolás!" he shouted, levitating some chairs with his psychokinesis. "Your actions will condemn us all!"

Nicolás and all the members of the Assembly gasped and stared at the creature.

"Brethren!" said Nicolás in a Hispanic accent. "It's a demon! Quickly, prostrate before him!"

Everybody in the room quickly stood up and bowed before Silver. Silver put down the chairs. "Uhh, hello?" he said. "What's everybody doing?"

Nicolás fell to his knees and prostrated before Silver.

"O being from another world," he said, "what is thy name?"

"Silver," replied Silver.

"All hail Silver, the dark lord!" cried Nicolás. In unison, the whole legislation began bowing and chanting " _All hail Silver, the dark lord_."

Then Silver had an idea. If everybody in the room were willing to passively serve him, he could get his job done a lot quicker.

"Er, yeah!" said Silver. "Your dark lord, Silver, who has come to you from the, ah, heavenly realm. I command ye to obey my every command, lest I smite thee with my totally awesome spiritual powers!" He held up his hands and made a teal light with them for the whole room to see.

Nicolás bowed again. "Lord Silver, your wish is my command. Is it now that you and the rest of the archons will take their place as the rightful rulers of the world?"

"Nicolás," said Silver ominously, "I know all that has happened and ever will happen. I know that your actions will result in the destruction of our glorious kingdom. For that reason, I have come to have you put to death."

"What?!" cried Nicolás. "But Your Omnipotence! Have I not served the archons well? Was it not I who converted the entire population of Middle and South America to atheism? What more could I do?"

Silver waved him off. "Take him away!"

Two members of the legislation stood up and grabbed Nicolás by the arms. Then they took him out the door to be executed.

"What else do you desire, O Silver?" asked Governor Henrique Capriles, the leader of the Justice First Party.

Silver flew over to the seat where Nicolás had been. He sat in it and put his feet up on the bench. "It's been awhile since I ate last," he said. "What have you got for food around here?"

"We live to please," said Henrique. "We shall prepare for you the best meal in all of District 6!"

"Excellent!" replied Silver. "And while you're at it, why don't you invite some beautiful Latino women over for lunch." Silver grinned. _I think I'm gonna like it here_ , he thought.

 _It is around 4 pm in District 8_

Jude put on his parachute and time bomb and turned to Misrab. "Misrab, why do you want to fly my airship into Baghdad so much?" he said in his thick, African accent. "This thing wasn't cheap, you know! And what if we need it for future missions?"

"Because," Misrab said in his Middle-Eastern accent, "I want to go to _Jannah_ with seventy-two virgins! And the most honorable way for a Muslim to sacrifice himself is in a fiery explosion! The bigger and more fiery, the better."

"There's still a chance," replied Jude. "I would recommend reading some more of the Bible before making this decision. Namely, John 3. The part where Nicodemus is asking Jesus how to get to heav - er, _Jannah_."

He jumped out of the airship and landed on the Building of the National Assembly of District 8. As usual, he broke in through an air vent and crawled through the duct. He knew he was drawing near to the office of the district king, General Idriss Déby, when he started to hear him jamming out loud to his Muslim music:

" _Saleelul as-sawarim: nasheedul ubah._

 _Wa darbul qitaly tariqul haya._

 _Fa baynaq tihamin, yubidu tugha._

 _Wa kateem musawtim jamilun sadah…"_

When Jude was just above the office, he received an incoming transmission on his communicator. "Jude-Mùshī?" said a voice with a Chinese accent. "Is Martin. Is your airship equipped for battle?"

"This really isn't a good time, Martin," complained Jude. "I'm in the middle of my mission. But if you run into trouble on your way to District 10, just go to the control panel and pull the big handle. The ship will engage Battle Mode, making it faster and it can fire lasers." He opened up the air vent and jumped down through. "Freeze, Your Majesty!" Jude shouted, pointing his handgun at King Idriss. "For the sake of the world, I will destroy you!"

"A revolutionary!" said Idriss, who also had an African accent. "I thought we'd seen the last of you back in 1979. Well, I'd love to see you _try_." He pulled out a staff with a ram skull on the end, and a green powder shot out of its eye sockets that surrounded Jude. Suddenly, Jude realized he couldn't move a muscle in his body.

"Impressive, yes?" Idriss scoffed. "It's a powder of paralysis. And now that you cannot move, you will be inept against _this_!" He waved his staff toward Jude, and a black circle appeared on the floor around Jude, with purple light emanating from it. Jude was immediately stung with the most awful pain he had ever felt, and he could feel his body growing weaker by the second. What was worse was every few seconds, short bursts of even more intense pain would strike him. He cried out in agony.

Idriss laughed at his misery. "Now that I have you under my thumb, I will be taking that," he said as he snatched the gun from Jude's painful hand. Then he pointed it at Jude's chest, saying "Say goodbye, rebel!"

Jude tried with all his might to move, but he still couldn't. "No!" he screamed. "You'll blow us all to -"

 _BANG!_

Idriss fired the gun. And as soon as the bullet hit the bomb on Jude's chest, the device exploded, demolishing the entire building.

Jude's blood, muscle tissue and bone fragments were spread over hundreds of yards of pavement. Idriss was thrown from the collapsing building with a near lethal amount of force. He landed on the pavement of the parking lot outside the ruins, blinded by the light and deafened by the sound, and unable to feel his body below his lower back. In his dying breath he lifted his bloody hands up and said " _Mawjat min aineikas_."

And, as if a home video had just been rewound, Idriss's body flew back into the building, which repaired itself. Jude's body parts reassembled back in the office, right where he was standing before. However, the pain had ceased, and he was able to move again.

"-bits!" Jude cried, then he suddenly looked surprised. "Wait, what just happened?"

"I am a witch doctor," replied Idriss. "I have studied Islamic mysticism since I was a child. The spell I just did was a spell of reversal, which I used to undo the last minute."

"Well I'm a soldier of the eternal God!" said Jude. "For someone who claims to be on the side of science, you sure seem to rely a lot on magic! Regardless, you're demonic powers are nothing compared to the power of the name of Jesus!"

"So you're a Christian!" cried Idriss. "I should have expected. Your people seem to be quite radical against our new world system. It is time you pay for the damage you have done."

Jude took off the bomb and set it gently on the floor.

"Okay," he said. "Let's take this outside, where it's safer!"

Idriss laughed. "If it's an outside fight you want, it's an outside fight you'll get!" He pointed his staff at the window and the window shattered. Then they hopped out into the hot sun. Jude wished he had taken off his Morpheus costume inside, but somehow the witch doctor was doing just fine in his three-piece suit.  
Idriss drove his staff into the ground. A pentagram appeared in the earth around him. " _Hujum, arwah alsahra,_ " he said. Three portals started opening up in mid air, and Jude watched in horror as three monsters emerged from them. He saw a human eye with bat wings. He saw a raven with razor sharp teeth in place of it's beak, wolf paws in place of it's wings, and a long serpent tail. He saw a tarantula with three heads: one of a cat, one of a human, and one of a toad. And all of these creatures were coming straight toward Jude to devour him.

Jude started to run, but the creatures were fast and caught up to him easily. Flight clearly wasn't an option; he had to fight these creatures. He threw sand at the eye-bat, blinding it and causing it to fall to the ground. While the creature was twitching and thrashing in the sand, Jude jumped on top of it, causing it to be crushed, and squeezing it's eye jelly out.

The tarantula creature scuttled toward him. It's cat head snapped at Jude while the toad head tried to lick him. Jude grabbed it by its toad tongue and swung it around his body with all his might. Then he threw it back into the portal it had emerged from.

"Don't get your hopes too high!" said Idriss. "I can keep this up all day!" He waved his staff again, and portals to the other dimension started opening up everywhere; in the air, on the ground, even on trees. Legions of demons started emerging from them.

The raven creature was half running, half slithering toward Jude. All the while, it was breathing fire from it's canine-like mouth. Jude managed to evade it long enough to get inside the office from the broken window. Jude tried throwing a couch cushion at it, but it just caught the cushion in it's mouth and incinerated it. Jude tried throwing a phone at it, but once again, it caught it in it's mouth, and the phone melted. Then Jude got an idea. He scooped up the time bomb and escaped out another window. He started running back to where Idriss was, but the raven-creature was able to catch up to him easily. When he was just several yards before Idriss, the creature jumped in front of him to defend him with the other demons.

"Your Majesty!" shouted Jude. "You must stop this! Opening so many portals in one location could cause a total collapse of the space-time continuum or something!"

"I don't care about the space-time continuum!" shouted Idriss. "All I care about is killing you!"

"Don't say I didn't warn you!" Jude said as he hurled the time bomb toward the creature defending Idriss. Sure enough, it caught the bomb in it's mouth, and trying to incinerate it, made it explode. The creature's body parts disassembled, spreading it's blood, brain matter, bone fragments and organ tissue all across the sand, bubbling from the heat of the explosion. Idriss was hurled into one of the portals on the ground, but managed to catch himself on the edge of the portal with his fingertips. Jude, on the other hand, was thrown back with great (but not lethal) force. And all the demons that had been surrounding Idriss were dead, too.

"Argh!" Idriss shouted. "Where's my blasted staff?"

Shaken by the explosion, Jude shook back to his feet and stumbled to the staff. 'Blasted' was right; it was very damaged from the explosion. But it was still usable. Jude brought it over to the portal Idriss was hanging off the edge of.

"The Bible says in Deuteronomy 7:26 'Neither shalt thou bring an abomination into thine house, lest thou be a cursed thing like it: _but_ thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it; for it _is_ a cursed thing.'" Jude raised the staff over his head.

"No!" shrieked Idriss. "If you destroy that thing, all my portals will close!"

"And?" said Jude.

"Couldn't you at least help me out of this one before you close it?"

Jude thought about it a moment, then said, "Yeah, you are right. I couldn't." Then he snapped the stick in two with his knee. Idriss's fingers gave up the edge of the portal as it closed, and, screaming, he fell forever into the endless void of the spirit dimension.

 _It is around half past 8 pm in District 9_

Hugging her father, Ayisha said in her Middle Eastern accent, "Please don't kill yourself Daddy. I love you."

"I know, sweetie," replied Misrab. "I know."

Ayisha jumped out, deployed her parachute, and landed on top of the Rashtrapati Bhavan, the home of the king of district 9: Pranab Mukherjee. She was about to enter through the air duct when she heard a voice coming from above, in an Indian accent:

"So nice of you to _drop_ by!"

Ayisha looked at the flagpole on the dome of the capitol building. On the very top was King Pranab, doing a tree pose with his eyes closed.

"How did you know I was here?" she shouted up to him.

The old man laughed as he softly levitated himself down to the roof, his eyes still closed. "Are you seeing this red dot on my forehead?" he said, pointing to his forehead. "This is my third eye; my _spiritual_ eye, which is always open."

"Well, prepare to have it shut forever!" said Ayisha, as she pulled out her single-shot handgun. She fired directly at Pranab's forehead, but just before hitting, the bullet slowed to a crawl and fell to his feet.

Flabbergasted, Ayisha stammered, "H-how did you…?"

"How did I what, child?" said Pranab. "How did I stop the bullet? There is no bullet. That which you believe to be a solid object is merely the sensation of the electrical signals your brain interprets. In a lucid dream, you can manipulate reality however you want, because you know that you are dreaming; it is not actually _reality_. But if you realized that the world you experience to be reality were a dream as well, you could, in theory, manipulate it however you want. And I do."

"Well, _you're_ about to wake up from this dream!" Ayisha shouted, as she took off the bomb strapped around her and threw it at Pranab.

A hole opened up in Pranab's torso through which the bomb passed right through. The bomb landed on the dome, blowing a hole in the top and causing it to collapse behind him. Without even turning around, he said, "You know, I really liked that dome." He used his mind to open a hole in the roof directly below Ayisha, causing her to fall through. He levitated down to the place she fell to. Then he opened a hole in the floor beneath her again and kept doing that over and over until they got to the basement.

"I could keep doing this all day," said Pranab. "Please surrender yourself."

Ayisha, bruised and beaten up, looked up at him with her face on the floor. "A soldier of God never surrenders to the enemy!" she shouted, coughing up some blood afterward.

"God?" said Pranab. "If you knew what I knew, you would realize you _are_ God."

Ayisha winced as she tried to pick herself up. "What do you mean?" she asked. "I thought you atheists didn't believe in God."

"You are partially correct," replied Pranab. "We do not believe in the God of the Bible. I am a master of Indian martial arts and mysticism, which recognizes no true God. Rather, we believe in humanity. Through the power of almighty science, we have gone from a blob of primordial soup to godlike beings who can build towers that reach the heavens, move at supersonic speeds, and even create a worldwide network of information. And now our precious science has given us a new technology that can make the very fabric of reality our plaything."

"What's that?" asked Ayisha, weakly.

Pranab produced a large device that resembled a hole puncher. "The Mark," he answered. "The Mark is administered to every citizen of the New World Order. It is a small implant that goes in your right hand or forehead."

"What does it do?"

"With this Mark," said Pranab, "you will have the power to instantly buy or sell whatever you want with a mere thought. Never again do you have to worry about losing cash or credit or debit cards. We have a cashless society now.

"Furthermore, this Mark essentially turns you into what the dictionary defines as God. You will be all-knowing. You will have unlimited strength. You will become immortal. And, if you accept this Mark, I will put all this behind us and set you free."

"Please," pleaded Ayisha. "I don't want to die."

"Excellent!" cried Pranab, as he produced a waiver. "Just sign this little scrap of paper in your blood, and I shall administer the Mark immediately."

Pranab held the paper before Ayisha. This is what it said:

MARK OF THE BEAST

 _ **H**_ _ear now the words of the Scientists,_

 _The secrets we hid in the night,_

 _When dark was our destiny's pathway,_

 _That now we bring forth into light._

 _Mysterious water and fire,_

 _The earth and the wide-ranging air,_

 _By hidden quintessence we know them,_

 _And will and keep silent and dare._

 _The birth and rebirth of all nature,_

 _The passing of winter and spring,_

 _We share with the life universal,_

 _Rejoice in the scientific ring._

 _Four times in the year the Great Sabbat_

 _Returns, and the Scientists are seen_

 _At Lammas and Candlemas dancing,_

 _On May Eve and old Hallowe'en._

 _When day-time and night-time are equal,_

 _When sun is at greatest and least,_

 _The four Lesser Sabbats are summoned,_

 _And Scientists gather in feast._

 _Thirteen silver moons in a year are,_

 _Thirteen is the coven's array._

 _Thirteen times at Esbat make merry,_

 _For each golden year and a day._

 _The power that was passed down the age,_

 _Each time between woman and man,_

 _Each century unto the other,_

 _Ere time and the ages began._

 _When drawn is the magical circle,_

 _By sword or athame of power,_

 _Its compass between two worlds lies,_

 _In land of the shades for that hour._

 _This world has no right then to know it._

 _And world of beyond will tell naught._

 _The oldest of Gods are invoked there,_

 _The Great Work of science is wrought._

 _For the two are mystical pillars,_

 _That stand at the gate of the shrine,_

 _And two are the powers of nature,_

 _The forms and the forces divine._

 _The dark and the light in succession,_

 _The opposites each unto each,_

 _Shown forth as a God and a Goddess:_

 _Of this our ancestors teach._

 _By night he's the wild winds rider,_

 _The Horn'd One, the Lord of the Shades._

 _By day he's the King of the Woodland,_

 _The dweller in green forest glades._

 _She is youthful or old as she pleases,_

 _She sails the torn clouds in her barque,_

 _The bright silver lady of midnight,_

 _The crone who weaves spells in the dark._

 _The master and mistress of science,_

 _That dwell in the deeps of the mind,_

 _Immortal and ever-renewing,_

 _With power to free or to bind._

 _So drink the good wine to the Old Gods,_

 _And Dance and make love in their praise,_

 _Till Elphame's fair land shall receive us_

 _In peace at the end of our days._

 _And Do What Thou Wilt be the challenge,_

 _So be it Love that harms none,_

 _For this is the only commandment._

 _By Science of old, be it done!_

"Preposterous!" shouted Ayisha. "I'll never give up my faith for godhood!"

Pranab frowned and rolled up the waiver. "Then you have chosen death." Pranab picked her up by the collar and dropkicked her up through all the holes in the ceiling. Then, as she was still flying up, he levitated above her, clenched his hands together, and spiked her back down into the basement.

 _It is around half past eleven pm in District 10_

When the airship reached the Ryongsong Residence in District 10, something strange happened. Martin and Misrab heard bullets ricocheting off the ship's armor. Then the radio turned on by itself, and the two heard a voice speak on the radio in a Korean accent:

"No welcome! This is restricted airspace! Surrender and go home, or face wrath of all-powerful Kim Jong Un!"

Martin and Misrab looked out the window and saw fighter jets surrounding them. They had the Jewish hexagram logo on either side of them.

"Quick, Misrab!" shouted Martin. "We gotta defend ourselves!"

Martin and Misrab hurried over to the control panel, but the buttons and levers had no labels. Martin had to call the manufacturer.

"Jude-Mùshī?" he said into his communicator. "Is Martin. Is your airship equipped for battle?"

"This really isn't a good time, Martin," complained Jude. "I'm in the middle of my mission. But if you run into trouble on your way to District 10, just go to the control panel and pull the big handle. The ship will engage Battle Mode, making it faster and it can fire lasers."

Martin hung up and Misrab pulled the handle. Suddenly the ship started to lower in the sky. "Oh, no!" said Martin. "Pressure gage say we losing air!"

The envelope of the ship flattened and compressed itself inside the car. Then, the car transformed into a giant fighter jet-like contraption.

"Great!" said Misrab. "Now let's blast these atheist infidels out of the sky!"

Martin began firing the laser cannons at the smaller jets surrounding their ship, using the buttons on the control columns. However, they were very fast and difficult to hit.

Misrab scratched his bald head. "Martin, have you ever flown a plane before?" he asked.

"No," replied Martin.

"Give me the yoke. I went to pilot school." Misrab took the wheel and began firing lasers at the jets. He knocked out every single one. Then he saw paratroopers come out of the falling jets and started aiming at them.

"Wait!" said Martin. "What are you doing?"

"We must kill them!" said Misrab. "Unbelievers are the vilest of all creatures, and we are to make war with them, just as the prophet Muhammed tells us! I am going to shoot their parachutes full of holes, and send them plummeting to their doom!"

"No, Misrab! No true!" cried Martin. "Romans 5:8 tells us God loves everyone, even unbelievers: 'But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.'"

Misrab stopped and looked up from the control panel. "God loves everyone?" he said. "That is not what the prophet tells us. He says _Allah_ loveth not the wasters, the proud, the arrogant boasters, the treacherous, the obscene, the oppressive, the polytheists, the sinners, the ungrateful, those given to excess, those who do mischief, or -"

"Muhammed was wrong!" interrupted Martin. "If God did not love sinners, He would not have died for them."

"What do you mean God died for sinners?" asked Misrab. "Are you saying God is dead?"

"No," replied Martin. "He is surely alive. John 3:16 says 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' What Jesus is saying in this passage is God loved whole world so much that he came to earth to die for us. Now gift of salvation is open to everyone, even those infidels you see descending to ground in their parachutes. We must not strip them of any chance they have to get salvation."

"The gift of salvation is for everyone?" asked Misrab. "Even me?"

Martin nodded. "Yes. All you need to do is admit you're a sinner, believe Jesus died for your sins, and ask God for forgiveness. If you need help finding words, my copy of the Bible has Sinner's Prayer in it." Martin handed Misrab his Bible.

Misrab tried to find the page, then handed the book back. "I cannot read this; it's all in Chinese."

Martin blushed and took the book back. "Sorry," he said. He went in the map room again and brought out another Bible. "This is your daughter's," he said. "It is Persian translation. And it also has prayer in it."

Misrab started flipping through the pages and found a more rigid one with the prayer written on it. He read it out loud in his native tongue:

" _(Father, I know that I have broken your laws and my sins have separated me from you. I am truly sorry, and now I want to turn away from my past sinful life toward you. Please forgive me, and help me avoid sinning again. I believe that your son, Jesus Christ died for my sins, was resurrected from the dead, is alive, and hears my prayer. I invite Jesus to become the Lord of my life, to rule and reign in my heart from this day forward. Please send your Holy Spirit to help me obey You, and to do Your will for the rest of my life. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.)"_

After he said this, Martin hugged him. "Welcome to our spiritual family."

Misrab replied (in English, the only language they both understood), "Thank you, Martin. But I must ask you: If killing is wrong in your religion, because everybody is given the chance to ask God for forgiveness, why is your mission to kill the king of District 10?"

"Because God has hardened King Kim Jong-Un's heart," replied Martin. "He is one of ten horns on Beast, as prophesied in Revelation. He has committed willful sin of giving his heart to enemy instead of Jesus. He has pushed God past where He would allow him to come back. Beast is fated to perish in Lake of Fire, and there is nothing we can do to change that."

"I see," said Misrab. "And that is why I must kill the king of District 7, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Because God has hardened his heart too, right?"

"Correct," answered Martin. "Well, better get moving. Must kill king before more defense comes."

"You know, after all you have taught me, I think I will change my mission. I will not destroy Jude's ship or myself. I will kill the king of my District quickly and painlessly."

"That's wonderful, Misrab. Farewell."

Martin opened the door and jumped out. He deployed his parachute and landed on top the Ryongsong Residence. He crawled through the air duct and found Kim's bedroom. When he got inside, he took a good look around. The rug was a giant Israeli flag. All over the room there were pedestals with busts of Kim Jong-Un on them. The wall had posters of North Korean propaganda. There were also photo portraits of Kim Jong-Un all over the wall. Behind his king-size bed there was a huge painting, as big as the bed itself, of Kim Jong-Un sitting majestically on a horse like Napoleon.

Martin stealthily crept to Kim's bed. Upon closer inspection, he noticed, in the darkness, Kim's blanket was a Korean Worker's Party flag. Martin reached into his pocket and pulled out a syringe of potassium cyanide solution. He squeezed the air bubbles out and carefully deployed the needle into Kim's neck. Then, just as he was sneaking back out, Kim came to life and slammed a red button on his bedside stand. Suddenly sirens came on and the door was barred shut.

Martin spun around to see Kim sitting upright in his bed. "I knew it!" shouted Kim, in a Korean accent. "I knew that no mosquito jabbing my neck flab!"

"B-but how?!" stammered Martin. "Th-that poison should have knocked you out cold!"

"Needle no deep enough!" shouted Kim. "They all made fun of me in school for being fatty fatso. But fat save my life! Fat keep poison from entering my bloodstream!"

Martin managed to crawl back through the air vent and get back on the roof, where he saw two faces he hoped he would never see again.

"Officer Mallie Cai and Jian!" exclaimed Martin. (Those two had tried to kill Martin and his Christian friends on multiple occasions in Part I)

"That is correct!" said Mallie, smiling menacingly while pointing a machine gun at Martin. "Thought you had seen last of us, huh? Well, guess again. We have taken over your church since you evaded us a couple nights ago. But now we work for the King!"

"Ready to turn yourself in?" asked Jian.

Martin shook his head. "I will never turn myself in!"

"I seriously doubt that," said Mallie, "because I believe _we_ have upper hand!" He pressed a button on his watch and a holographic video was projected. It showed Martin's friend, Shen Zhizi, wearing prison attire, manacled in a dungeon, surrounded by a bunch of torture devices. "Help me, Martin!" he cried.

Martin gasped. The hologram disappeared. "That video was recorded two hours ago," said Mallie.

"What are you doing with my friend?" demanded Martin.

Mallie chuckled. "Your friend is being tortured in unspecified prison. And if you don't turn yourself in, you'll never see him again!"

Martin had no choice. It wasn't only because he cared for his tormented friend, but he knew that, with enough pressure, the torturer could get him to crack like an egg, and suck the information right out of him. He sat down and held up his hands. "You win," he said. "Take me away."

Martin was handcuffed and taken to the prison Shen was in. Martin was still only wearing his underwear and t-shirt, so he was given a set of striped pajamas with a yellow hexagram on them that said "I HAVE FAITH". He was put in a prison cell, where he saw his friend, beaten black and blue all over his body.

"Oh, God," said Martin, his eyes welling up, "Shen, what did they do to you?"

"They tried to get information from me," Shen replied weakly. "They wanted to know about something called the Tribulation Force. I didn't know what they were talking about, but they were relentless. I broke down a few times and pretended I knew just to get them to stop, but the polygraph kept reporting that I was lying. They didn't stop until they received word that you were coming."

Martin wept. This was all his fault. He knew he would face difficulty ministering in China, and now his ministry had endangered Shen's life, had him tortured for information he didn't have. Now Martin would have to drink this cup as well. He knew in just a moment he would have to leave Shen alone in the cell while he would face the same torment as Shen had. How long, he wondered, would he last before he gave up the information?

He won't. Because, unbeknownst to Shen, Martin has one last trick up his sleeve. Martin went over to Shen put his arm around him. Then he spoke into the communicator:

"Misrab, do you hear me?"

"Yes, I hear you," Misrab replied.

"Recall," said Martin.

"Really, now?" said Misrab. "I just got to Baghdad, and I haven't heard back from -"

"Please, Misrab, is our only hope!" Martin pleaded. "The mission was bust! Others will understand! Recall us now before we're toast!"

Misrab hit the recall button in the airship. And, just like that, Martin and Shen vanished.

Martin and Shen were suddenly standing aboard the airship, along with David, Grace, Mina, Amy, Silver, Jude, and Misrab. "Oh, thank God," said Mina. "I thought I was done for!"

"Me too," said Amy. "I almost got captured!"

"We _were_ captured," said Martin. "That's why I asked Misrab to hit the -" He froze with the realization of what he had just done. It should have been him, _him!_ \- not Shen, who had been tortured. The least he could have done was face the same punishment as Shen. But he didn't. He knew he deserved it; it was he who had brought his faith to his homeland. By doing so he endangered not only his life, but Shen's and those of the rest of Bread of Life Christian Church. Who knew how many other Chinese Christians were being tormented for his cause? What if Pastor Wang _himself_ was among them? He had waited until the very last minute to be recalled. How much of a coward could he be? He fell to his knees, sobbing, saying "I'm sorry, Shen… so sorry…"

The eight others kneeled beside him to comfort him. "You did what you had to do, Martin," said Shen. "You may not have gotten chance."

Pastor David prayed over Martin. "Lord, let Martin's heart be at peace."

Suddenly Martin had a vision. He saw the exterior of Bread of Life Christian Church, but it was very different. The name was changed to "Bread of Life Atheist Church". Martin moved inside and saw it had been taken over by the atheists. They were singing worship the song "This I Don't Believe (The Atheist Creed)

" _I don't believe in God the father, almighty maker of heaven and maker of earth._

 _Nor in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord._

 _He wasn't conceived by the Holy Spirit and wasn't born of the Virgin Mary._

 _He didn't suffer under Pontius Pilate, and wasn't crucified, dead, and buried._

 _And I believe what I believe, it's what makes me who I am_

 _And I did not make it, no, it is making me_

 _It is not the truth of God, it is the invention of Man._

 _I don't believe that He who suffered_

 _Was crucified, buried, and dead_

 _He didn't descend into the grave_

 _And on the third day he didn't rise again._

 _He didn't ascended into heaven where he doesn't sit at God's mighty right hand_

 _I don't believe that he's returning_

 _To judge the quick and the dead and the sons of men_

 _And I believe what I believe, it's what makes me who I am_

 _And I did not make it, no, it is making me_

 _It is not the truth of God, it is the invention of Man._

 _I don't believe in the Holy Spirit,_

 _one Holy Church,_

 _the communion of saints,_

 _the forgiveness of sins,_

 _I don't believe in the resurrection,_

 _I don't believe in the life that never ends._

 _And I believe what I believe, it's what makes me who I am_

 _And I did not make it, no, it is making me_

 _And I did not make it, no, it is making me_

 _And I did not make it, no, it is making me_

 _It is not the truth of God, it is the invention of Man."_

They sang other songs like "Evolution Song", "Trust in Jew", and "Ten Thousand Thousand

Thousand Years". Then the rabbi began his sermon in his New York Jewish accent. "Eh, greetings, servants of science. Welcome to our first service in our newly christened Church of the Atheists. Hail Carl Sagan."

" _Hail, Sagan,_ " the congregation answered.

"I, your respectable rabbi, will be teaching and guiding you all through these troubled you

know, a bunch a' Christian _goyim_ have started a resistance against the United Atheist League. They have ruthlessly murdered three of our beloved kings already, and attempted to murder the other seven…"

Suddenly the scene changed, and Martin saw the congregation of his own church in an underground bunker. He saw Pastor Wang speaking before his own congregation.

"Greetings, servants of God," Pastor said in Chinese. "Welcome to our first service in our new house of worship. I will be teaching and guiding you all through these troubled times. As you know, we were driven from our previous building and it is now overrun by the atheists.

"But do not worry. Instead, be filled with joy, because we are simply seeing prophecy unfolding before our eyes. Matthew 10:22 and 23: 'And ye shall be hated of all _men_ for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.'"

The vision ended. Martin lifted his hands up and thanked God for showing him his friends were safe. Then, wiping away tears, he stood up.

"I just noticed something," Martin said, with a sniffle. "Misrab, are you _sure_ you recalled everyone?"

Misrab looked perplexed. "I though I did. But…"

"Hey!" said David. "Where's Josh and Ayisha?"

Jude hit the recall button again, but nothing happened. Then he tried calling Josh on the communicator. "Josh, come in, Josh, can you hear me?" But he heard nothing but static. Then he tried Ayisha. Still, just static. "Oh, God, no…" said Jude. "Their communicators must be broken. For all we know, they could be dead."

"C'mon everybody, we need to pray for them," said David.

Everybody got in a circle and held hands. Silver joined in just to be polite, but he had no idea what he was supposed to be doing. Who were all these people talking to? Why were they speaking in foreign languages, even the ones whose native tongue was English? Confused, Silver just bowed his head and closed his eyes.

Meanwhile, the lifeless body of Josh Wheaton drifted gently through the moat of the Tokyo Imperial Palace.

That of Ayisha was lying in a puddle of it's own blood in the basement of the Indian Capitol.

 _To be concluded..._


	3. Chapter 3: Warriors

_Crisis City, UAA - 2206 C.E._

Silver the Hedgehog had finally completed the first part of his mission. He had managed to find the lost Floating Island in the sky where the mystical owl spirit, Nicholas O'Tyme, guarded the all-powerful Time Stones. Now that Silver had one of them, he had the power to travel back in time.

Silver checked his knapsack. Good, it hasn't inexplicably vanished. There the stone was, plain as day, the beautiful, hexagonal-cut gemstone with a yellow aura. It was a happy aura, an aura of hope. It was a reminder that the world still has a chance.

This place Silver was currently in was called Crisis City. It's name was eerily suitable for its environment. The city was in ruins. There were huge gashes in the ground and in the streets, so deep they had wells of hot lava burning at the bottom. The civilians lived in fear and poverty. And the sky always seemed to have a cloud of darkness around it. All of the city was like this except for one small part in the center. This place had pristine skyscrapers, cleanly paved highways, and helicopters swarming the skies as flies around a corpse. It the place where the Jews lived, the place where they managed the banks and governmental affairs. That's why they called it... Jewtopia.

Silver's mission was to free the world from the tyranny of the atheists and their leader, the Antichrist. But in order to do that, he needed to do more research. That's why he was headed to the old abandoned library downtown.

The building was boarded shut, but Silver knew of a secret entrance he made from a hole in the wall. He stepped through the hole and went back to the table where he had been doing most of his research. He sat down and opened up a book titled _The Goy's Guide to World History_ by Shalom Shekelberg.

Unit 6: The Modern Age. Chapter 36: Early 21st century. Section 5: The Rise of the New Order

"Things were going great for the atheists until early April of the year 2016. That was when Congress passed a bill requiring all the pastors in the United States to present all their sermons from the past 120 days to the U.S. government. But then a man by the name of **David Hill** stood up for his delusional beliefs by refusing to do so.

"Thousands of pastors from all over the country followed in the footsteps of this rabble rouser. When they were discovered, they were sent to Guantanamo Bay until they learned to obey the law.

"Millions of Christians started to protest, finding the government's harsh punishments for this law to be unconstitutional. They formed a terrorist organization called 'Christian Lives Matter', and they started chaos all over the country.

"Who could save the country from these hateful, bigoted, fascist SS brownshirt gestapo nazi neo nazis? It was one nobody by the name of **Al Gore** , the Pontifex Maximus of the Church of Climatology. He made it known publicly that the Christians were plotting to take over the country with their homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, misogynist, chauvinist, anti-semitist, anti-Zionist, antidisestablishmentarianist agendas.

"President **Barack Obama** heeded Gore's warning and declared war on Christianity. It was mandated by the government that all the Christians in the United States had to wear a six-pointed star-shaped patch on their clothing reading I HAVE FAITH to identify them as Christians. This was so the _real_ Americans knew who to trust and who to watch out for on the streets. If people bearing this patch were found protesting, they would be sent to FEMA camps until either they learned to remain passive in the midst of their persecution or they lost the war. The war on Christianity was going relatively well for the time being. Cities tore down Christian monuments and replaced them with things more… diverse. That's why you probably see statues of other gods out there, like Prometheus, Baphomet, and Shiva. Barack Obama was sure that making the nation less "Christian normative" would bring him to victory in the end.

"However, things turned around for the atheists again on the Easter Sunday of 2018. On this day, David Hill made a devious escape from Guantanamo Bay! Realizing now that his efforts had been futile, Obama made a truce with the leaders of the world (even those in countries with not-great foreign relations, such as the **Islamic State** and the **Democratic People's Republic of North Korea** ) to try and figure out what to do with the Christians. They eventually came up with a plan: **The Final Solution to the Christian Question**. The Club of Rome would give up their borders and redivide the world's governments into ten sections, with a powerful centralized government in Vatican City and Jerusalem. Vatican City would be the religious capital, Jerusalem would be the economic capital. The nations of the world would unite against a common enemy and systematically exterminate them. This new world alliance was dubbed the **United Atheist League**. The enactment of the Final Solution would be known historically as the **Christian Cleansing**. To separate the sheep from the goats, so to speak, **Pope Francis** issued a special mark of loyalty to be administered to everyone in the world. In order to receive it, one had to sign a contract. The clause of the contract stated that by receiving the mark, one had to give up allegiance to God and pledge allegiance to the new world religion (ensuring no Christian could receive the mark, and thus would not be able to conduct commerce). We know this mark today as the **Mark of the Beast**. You probably have one embedded in your right hand or your forehead, and you probably get it scanned whenever you make a purchase.

This new church was created in the place of the Christian church, formed as a combination of Judaism and atheism, and was called **Atheistic Judaism**. The fundamental truths of Atheistic Judaism were as follows: Science is perfect in every way, the Jews are the natural born rulers of the planet, and the goyim exist only to passively serve them. According to Atheistic Judaism, the Jews are the seed of the Archons and the goyim just evolved from the retarded offspring of five monkeys who had buttsex with a fish-squirrel millions of years ago. We know all this is true because we have scientific evidence that supports it (remember, science is perfect in every way). The only power higher than the Jews was the Archons and their Messiah. While the Christians believed the Messiah had already come and gone, the Jews knew their Messiah was still on his way.

"Unfortunately, the Final Solution experienced a major setback when Reverend Jude, better known as the infamous **Judpheus** , started an underground resistance group called the **Tribulation Force**. The Tribulation Force had a well-developed plan to assassinate the ten world leaders of the new world kingdom, because they knew, if they could fall the faces of our kingdom, the kingdom would be soon to fall with them! Their plan almost worked, but due to their lack of membership, they failed to kill off even one. Their wicked deeds were exposed, and the group had to disband. Regardless, the dangerous criminals were still out there, and it was known that they were still conspiring against the state.

"The Messiah finally came that same year in a great flaming light. He became known as the Antichrist, because he was the perfect antithesis to the Christian Messiah known as the Christ. While the Christian Messiah preached lies about the Jews, calling them and 'the synagogue of Satan', this Messiah brought peace upon this chaotic Christian world. He and his right-hand prophet, Pope Francis, brought a whole new form of rule upon the world government. The two of them were here to save the world from the Tribulation Force. They went from town to town, city to city, country to country, continent to continent destroying everything related to Christianity. In doing so, they found the members of the Tribulation Force and brought justice upon them. The last two members of the Tribulation Force, **Misrab Khan** and **Martin Yip** , were found in 2030, having changed their names and appearances, and living in towns over 900 miles apart. According to authorities at the time, questioning was not necessary, because they already knew the rest of the Tribulation Force had been captured.

"One year following the neutralization of the Trib Force, the UAL started to experience division. Many of the atheists started to become argumentative about what their world alliance should be called. Officially, it was the United Atheist League. But much of the eastern districts believed that the United Atheist _Alliance_ made more sense, logically, than the United Atheist _League_. Furthermore, a group of sea otters believed that the title _Allied_ Atheist Alliance was most logical, as the abbreviation would be three A's. So, each of the districts underwent revolutions. In the end, Districts 1, 4, and 6 were ruled by the United Atheist League. Districts 2, 5 and 7 were taken over by the United Atheist Alliance, and Districts 3, 9, 8 and 10 were taken over by the sea otters. The UAL soon went to war against the two new kingdoms.

"Although they were locked in combat against one another, the ruling ideology of each kingdom was the same: Atheism. The shadow government controlling the governments of each kingdom were one and the same: the Jews. And their spiritual leaders were the same as well: the Antichrist and Pope Francis. Much as the citizens all wanted their own country to win, victory was neither necessary nor desirable for the Jews. This war was a crucial step in their depopulation process (which had absolutely nothing to do with creating a controllable population, it was just that the population was causing climate change and stuff). As each kingdom was far too powerful for another to invade, the only way for either side to win the war was through the use of bombs. Both kingdoms started building powerful artillery, not made of men, but of missiles and rockets. And so began the most destructive war the world ever saw.

"The Christian Cleansing finally reached its complete end in the year 2038 when UAA authorities discovered the last Christians on earth in an underground bunker being used as a church in the most remote part of Siberia. The church was ransacked and every member of it was sentenced to execution. Every last artifact of Christianity was then burned and later that year, the bunker was demolished.

"The war between the three kingdoms lasted 27 years. In 2045, the three kingdoms were forced to unconditionally surrender to one another after their most destructive battle, the **Battle of Washington**. In desperation, a last-ditch effort was made by the UAA to end the war by invading the capital of the UAL, Washington D.C.. But the AAA sea otters decided to catch them off-guard while they were battling each other and destroy them all. In the end of this battle, there was no clear winner. Each kingdom would be faced with total annihilation if the war were to continue; their armies had been reduced to mere thousands, and their resources had been all but eradicated by constant bombing.

"If anything good came of this long war, the global population was reduced by 97%, creating an easily controllable mass of humans for the Jews, eh, I mean, it stopped climate change. But nearly every major city on earth had been bombed, and there weren't nearly enough resources to rebuild them all. So, cities decided to only rebuild a small portion of themselves for the Jews to live in, and let the goyim reside in the… er… rest of the city. And that is why even today our cities are structured the way they are; with Jews doing all the hard work in the big shiny buildings, the proletariat doing joyfully menial jobs for them in the outskirts, and a giant barbed wire fence with hundreds of armed guards between the two."

That was where Silver stopped reading. He could see now, clearly, what he had to go back in time to fix: He had to go to the year 2018 and make sure the Tribulation Force fulfills their mission to assassinate the ten kings, preventing the rise of the Antichrist, and furthermore preventing the 27-year war. And with the Time Stone finally in his possession, he could now do so.

Just then he started hearing sirens. They grew louder and louder, then they stopped getting louder. Then he heard what sounded like the shattering of wood and metal coming from the main lobby.

 _Oh no, they found me,_ thought Silver.

There was a loud knock on the door of the room he was in. "Open up, goy!" shouted a voice with a distinctly Yiddish accent. "Dis is deh police!"

Silver stood up from the table and opened up his bag. He had to use the Time Stone now while he had the chance. But his chance was running out. The door of the room was locked, but the police managed to break it down with a battering ram.

"Freeze!" shouted the police officer, holding a laser rifle pointed at Silver. "You are under arrest for trespassing. Make one more move and I'll shoot."

Silver was frozen. But he knew what he had to do. The owl guardian had said all one had to do to use the Stone was to focus his thoughts on the exact time and location in which he desired to be. When was that again? His eyes darted to the open page. Right, it was April 3, 2018 when the Trib Force planned their attack on the state.

"Hey, I saw him move!" said another officer. "Shoot 'im right between deh eyes!"

"With pleasure," said the armed officer. But he hesitated, and started moving his barrel side to side.

"What are you waiting for? Take yah aim!"

"I can't," he said. "His eyes are so close together, I can't tell where's between 'em."

"Whateveh! Just shoot deh bahsted!

Then they started hearing Silver chanting with his eyes closed: " _Tribulation Force... 2018... Tribulation Force… 2018… Tribulation Force… 2018…"_

"Eh, what's he saying?" asked another officer. "Tribu-what-now?"

" _Tribulation Force... 2018... Tribulation Force… 2018… Tribulation Force… 2018…"_

"Don't matteh!"

" _Tribulation Force…"_

"Squeeze -"

" _2018…"_

" -deh-"

" _Tribulation Force..."_

"-triggeh-"

" _2018…"_

"-now!"

" _Chronos Control!"_

In the moment the rifle was fired, Silver vanished into thin air.

 _Little Rock, District 1_ _\- the present (2018)_

"Are you okay, Your Honor?"

These were the first words Judge Robert Stennis heard when he woke up. "Oh, my aching head," he groaned, placing his hand on his forehead, then realizing it was wrapped in bandages. "Where am I?"

"You're at the Arkansas State Hospital," said the nurse at the foot of the bed. "You were shot in the forehead with a single-shot handgun in court not long ago. You've been in a coma ever since then."

Suddenly the memories came back. He had ordered Grace Wesley to shoot Barack Obama for his crimes against science. But she, for some reason, tried aiming at King Trump instead, and ultimately shot the judge.

"You know, Miss Nurse," said the Judge. "Having such a close brush with death really started to get me thinking…"

"You haven't been capable of thought for the last twenty-four hours."

"I mean," he continued, "about life. If life has some sort of… greater meaning. I think this event in my life has changed me, physically and spiritually."

"You don't say."

"Oh, I do," he said, looking thoughtfully at the ceiling. "I have been an agnostic all my life. I never really went to church or anything like that. But now... I think I've discovered the truth."

"Which is?"

Judge Stennis sat up in the bed and started shouting. "That Christians are nothing but a bunch of cheap lying no-good rotten four flushing low-life snake licking dirt-eating inbred overstuffed ignorant blood-sucking dog-kissing brainless dickless hopeless heartless fat-assed bug-eyed stiff-legged spotty-lipped worm-headed sacks of monkey shit!"

"I understand your frustration, Your Honor," the nurse said quietly. "but please! Mind your language!"

"From this day forward," said Stennis, "I will no longer be a completely unbiased judge. It was the science of the medical industry that saved me from death, so I accept science as my lord and savior! I'm an atheist now!"

"Well," said the nurse, "In light of the new state religion, hospitals have removed all copies of the Christian Bible from the patients' rooms and have replaced them with copies of the Atheist Bible. There should be one in this bureau." She opened up a drawer and pulled out a book, then handed it to the judge.

"' _The GOD Delusion_ by Richard Dawkins'," he read. "This is perfect! Time for me to start reading up on my religion!"

Hours passed quickly. Stennis was so captivated that he didn't even put the book down when the nurse asked him what he wanted for lunch. "Huh? Ah, chicken's fine," he had said.

He had started reading at around eight o'clock in the morning. By almost eleven o'clock at night, he had finished the whole thing; 464 pages. "It's all so clear to me now," he said to himself. "I mean, it's so obvious that humans evolved from hairy smelly monkey-men. And Christians are hateful bigots who are too close-minded accept science. Morality is subjective, not objective, so I can do whatever I want. But what _do_ I want?..." He thought a minute. Then he got it:

"I want to exterminate the Christians."

 _Tokyo, District 3_

Josh Wheaton coughed up a load of blood and filthy water. Blinking tears out of his eyes, he started to make out figures. He could hear them talking, but he couldn't make out the words because his ears were full of water. He tried to sit up, but winced in pain. Where was he? What had he been doing? He was in so much of a daze he could not answer that question. Then, all of a sudden, the memories came back like a dream…

He had gone to District 3 to assassinate Emperor Akihito. But the Emperor had ninja superpowers or something and beat him black and blue. The last thing he remembered was being crushed by the literal river Akihito dropped on him. How had he survived such a thing?

With all his might he shook his head to clear his ears. He felt warm water trickling out. Now he could hear voices, speaking with east Asian accents:

"That is last time I put my mouth on man's mouth."

"Did you just assume his gender?"

"Well, look who talking! You no mind pronouns!"

"Look, he- she- it- coming to."

Josh could now see clearly, too. He was lying on a smelly mattress in what appeared to be somebody's basement. The figures before him were Japanese people with hair dyed weird colors. Some were chubby, and others were anorexic, but none of them had a good physique. Actually, none of them were quite attractive at all, which was surprising to Josh, because Japanese girls with brightly colored hair were always beautiful in his animes. But some of these girls could be confused with males. They were greasy, with acne, and had very thick brows. Their faces had piercings in places he didn't even think possible. And the men (or what clearly seemed to be men) were ugly, too. They were fat and smelled like they hadn't bathed in weeks. Those whose nails were not painted were filthy.

"Wh-who are you?" asked Josh, sitting up painfully, then resting on his palms.

"Typical for white male to show no appreciation for minority," said the person nearest to him. The person looked and almost sounded like a female, but she had short hair, small breasts, and was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. "Here I am, a homosexual transgender working-class Asian who just happened to know CPR when I found you in the river, and you just brush it all off asking irrelevant questions."

"Okay, your a homo-trans-something-or-other who saved me from drowning," said Josh. "But who are all these guys?"

"Guys?!" the ze said. ('ze' was the prefered pronoun for this person) "Why you no all-inclusive? Why you no say, 'who are all them'? Why only acknowledge men?"

"I'm sorry!" Josh apologized. "I mean, who are they?"

Ze nodded. "That more like it. They are your allies, Josh Wheaton of the Tribulation Force."

"What?" exclaimed Josh. "How do you know my name?"

"Everyone in district know your name," said a fat girl with purple hair, wearing a button that said WORDS CAN RAPE. "You were on news for fighting the nation's leader, Emperor Akihito. They know you are Christian. They want you dead. But we want to help."

"Why? Why are you helping me?" asked Josh.

"Because we are Social Justice Warriors!" said a skinny guy wearing glasses, a beanie, and a rainbow t-shirt (he was clearly gay). "We know Christians are being oppressed. So we help them get privilege back from atheists! We propose alliance between SJW Army and Tribulation Force!"

"Every one of us in the SJW Army experience oppression," said another woman. "For example, at my job, I work 0.001105Ƀ per hour. But male who hired two month after me get 0.0014Ƀ! So I go on strike to protest wage gap."

"Oh yeah, we use coins now, don't we?" said Josh. "But what does this 'wage gap' have to do with -"

"I ordered cake from bakery few months ago," said the skinny guy with the glasses. "It was never delivered. Baker no deliver it because I am gay."

"I don't think bakeries deliver -"

"And me!" said a black guy wearing a Rainbow Dash sweatshirt and a rainbow-colored wig. "I was boarding bus to go to work, and bus driver say, 'move on back'. It is year 2018! No have right to to tell black person to go to back of bus!"

"So you see," said the transgender person, "we know how you feel. We know how it feels when society puts bounty on your head just because of your race, religion, sexuality, or something else that makes you different."

"Oh yeah. I think you understand _completely_ ," said Josh sarcastically. "Well, the Trib Force could use all the help we can get. I'm with you gu - I mean, you _all_."

"Excellent! I can see you are already adapting to our ways with your word usage. But first, I think you should get new look. You need to look more… _Diverse_."

"What do you mean?"

"Look at you," ze said, holding up a mirror. "You are white male. You have blue eyes. But, on plus side, your perfect hair and complexion already make you look gay."

"But… But I'm not gay!" cried Josh.

"Gay is no insult!" snapped the gay man with the glasses.

"Dosei is right," ze said, walking over to a bureau in the corner. "There is nothing wrong with being gay. And even if you no gay, it makes you look accepting of gays if you look like them yourself."

"So your name is Dosei," said Josh to the gay man. "Cool name. I wonder what it means."

"Aha! This will be perfect!" Ze had a pair of elastic skinny jeans and a rainbow tye-dye t-shirt that had bold text in the front, saying THIS IS WHAT A FEMINAZI LOOKS LIKE. Ze handed them to Josh. "Change out of those filthy rags and put on these clean clothes.

Josh literally tore his prison uniform off and put on the "diverse" clothing.

"Wow," said Josh. "Feels like it's been forever since I've worn normal clothes. I've been wearing that thing ever since I was exiled to Guantanamo Bay."

"Now you are one of us," ze said. "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Tomomi. Well, my birth name was Hitomi, but I had it changed when I realized I was not really female, but non-binary. I am sergeant and brains of this army section."

"My name is Atsui," sat the fat woman with the purple hair. "I consider me powerhouse of section."

Josh looked at the woman, then the black guy. He had a huge belly, but his arms were bulging with muscle from beneath his Rainbow Dash jacket. "I don't know," said Josh. "I might consider _that_ guy the powerhouse -"

"You mean because he is man?!" she screamed.

"No! I mean -"

" _Baka!_ " she shouted. "Stop mansplaining to me! It triggers my anxiety!" She shot her chubby hand into her pocket and pulled out an inhaler. She started sucking on it vigorously.

"My name is Shiroi," said the black man. "My birth name was Willie Wiggins, but I changed it because it enforce black stereotypes about names."

"I am Dosei," said Dosei. "But you already know that. Hey, em, are you like, _positive_ you no gay?"

"Uh, pretty sure."

"Because, like, you might just not realize it yet. It took me many year to come out of closet."

"I don't think you're my type."

"My name is MangaGirl2500," said a skinny guy wearing a skirt and a pink sweater.

"That sounds more like a screen name to me," said Josh. "And why is it Manga _Girl_?"

"Because that is what I am, see?" He held up a pendant hanging around his neck. It was the symbol of Venus. "Were you assuming otherwise?"

"No, no," said Josh. "You're the girliest girl I've seen all day."

He giggled like a schoolgirl and crossed his legs. "Thanks. I have been taking estrogen supplements."

"And I am Reninisuto," said the manliest-looking man in the room. He was fat, had long green hair (though half his scalp was shaved, and a fine green beard on his pimply face. He wore a crimson t-shirt with a yellow five-pointed star on it. "But my friends call me Ren."

"Nice to meet you, Ren," said Josh. He turned to Tomomi. "Uh, is there anyone else?"

"What, are we insufficient to support social justice?" said Tomomi.

"Well, you gotta admit, this is pretty small for an army sect. There are, what, six of you? Seven, counting me."

"We are section closest to capital," ze replied. "We are most powerful sect in District 3. Just you wait until you see what we can do!"

 _New Delhi, District 9_

Ayisha laid still on a smelly mattress with no sheets. Her back stung, feeling like the skin on it had been ripped off. She felt a breeze down her front - she was not wearing a shirt anymore. Instead, her whole torso was tightly wrapped in bandages. She tried opening her eyes, but as soon as she saw light, she was quickly reminded of how bad her head felt. A slight movement caused her to feel a huge gash in the back of it. It was also wrapped in bandages; her whole head had been shaven. Groaning, she said out loud, "Where am I?"

She was startled to hear a voice reply, with an Indian accent, "You are in good hands."

Ayisha forced an eye open. She saw an indian woman sitting at the foot of the mattress wearing a green sari. There were some other Indian people surrounding the mattress. The room she was in was small, dirty, looked very cheaply made. The floor was made of concrete. The walls and ceiling were made of a combination of plywood and aluminum siding. The windows were broken and were being covered by sheets of canvas. It looked like the room was the entirety of the household, with a potbelly stove, a metal washtub, a toilet, and a bed.

"Who are you?" asked Ayisha.

"My name is Parveen. It was I who cleaned and dressed your many wounds."

"Why'd you do it?"

Parveen stood up. "We are the Social Justice Warriors. We saw your fight with King Pranab Mukherjee last night. Many residents of the city did. You were, how you say, _owned_."

"I'm not really a fighter," said Ayisha. "But -"

"You ended up knocked out cold in the basement of the capitol building," Parveen continued. "I rushed to the place as soon as possible. Very bad shape, you were in. Your back looked like it had exploded on the floor. And your head was cracked open. I rushed you to my home. I cleaned your wounds and stitched everything up. And it was all because I sensed you were the oppressed."

"What do you mean?"

A man standing behind her explained: "We received word from SJ Headquarters in District 1 that there has been a shift in the balance of social justice in the last four years. It seems that the atheists have gained a disproportionately large amount of privilege and the Christians have lost it."

"Y-you know that I'm Christian?" she stammered, sitting up. She couldn't help but to feel slightly exposed, not so much by their knowledge about her faith than by the fact that he was wearing nothing above the waist but a top made of bandages.

"It's okay," Parveen said. "We love and tolerate people of every race and religion. We are here to help you fight oppression."

"How?"

"You will see."

 _Jude's airship, the skies above District 7_

"It's no use," said Pastor Jude. "It's been more than a day, and the radar still hasn't picked up on Josh _or_ Ayisha."

"It's okay," said Misrab Khan. "I know Allah - er, _God_ will protect my daughter."

Jude turned to the rest of the Trib Force. "As you all know, our last mission did not go _quite_ as well as we expected. We lost two teammates, and I am sure the rest of you got quite a beating. I know I did.

"But it was not a _complete_ loss. We have gained a new member, Shen Zhizi. I was surprised to find Shen was willing to enter the battlefield after his extensive injuries from his interrogation."

Shen nodded. "No worry about me. I have healed well last night."

"And at least three of us were able to complete our missions," Jude continued. "I can say with great relief that Districts 2, 6 and 8 have been liberated. No longer will they suffer under the rule of -"

"I hate to be a Debbie Downer," said David Hill, "but come look at this."

The Trib Force moved around the giant screen David was in front of. It showed a world map, divided into seven regions. "District 2 has merged with District 5. District 6 has merged with District 1. And District 8 has merged with District 7. None of the Districts have been liberated. They just have new rulers."

"But what about the numbers?" asked Jude.

David pulled up a news article. "Listen to this: 'In light of the falling of our three great leaders, Kings Jean-Claude Juncker, Nicolás Maduro and Idriss Déby, the Districts 2, 6, and 8 shall be merged with 5, 1, and 7, respectively. The world government has decided to give the Districts new names accordingly: From this day forward, Districts 1 and 6 shall be collectively called "Panamerica", or "Panem" for short. Districts 2 and 5 are now "Eurasia". District 3 is now "Laponia". District 4 is now "Oceania". District 7 and 8 are now "Midesta". District 9 is now "Indo-Pacifica". And District 10 is "Eastasia".' Sounds like _1984_ all over again, huh, Pastor Jude?"

"This isn't what I was expected to happen," Jude replied. He spoke to the Trib Force again. "Look guys, I know things are looking bad for us. But don't worry! All this means is we have new objectives. See, our last mission failed because we were spread too thin. We are lucky we managed to defeat even three of the kings single-handedly. But if we work together on our next mission, we can get the job done!"

"Good thinking, Pastor Jude!" said Mina Oliver. "When we were working alone, we were nearly powerless. But united, the Tribulation Force could be a real pain in the butt for the atheists!"

"Ah, what is our next mission?" asked Shen.

Jude started pacing the floor. "I don't know yet."

Just then they heard a beeping sound coming from the radar on the control panel below the screen. Jude rushed back to the controls.

"What is it?" asked Amy Ryan. "Have we found Josh or Ayisha?"

` "No," Jude replied. "This is something different. It's an SOS signal coming from Park County, in Colorado."

"Maybe there's another resistance group there!" exclaimed Grace Wesely.

"Wouldn't that be great," agreed Jude. "Alright, I have a plan for a new mission. We'll divide up into two teams. David, Martin, Mina and Amy will be Team A. Misrab, Grace, Silver, Shen, and myself will be Team B. We will take Team A to District - er, 'Panem' to investigate the SOS. They can report their findings to Team B via the communicators in your watches. While they're doing that, Team B will continue to search the world to find Josh and Ayisha. Got it?"

Both teams nodded. Jude punched the coordinates of the SOS into the control panel and set the airship on autopilot. _I don't know what this is,_ thought Jude, _but this might be just what we need to win_.

 _Little Rock,_ _District 1_ _Panamerica_

"Hail, my fellow brother and sister atheists. My name is Robert Stennis, former justice of the Little Rock District Court," said Stennis. He was dressed in a black military suit (albeit still with bandages around his head), speaking on a podium before a sea of civilians with picket signs, saying things like SCIENCE HATES CHRISTIANS, SCIENCE IS YOUR ENEMY, CHRISTIANS DOOM NATIONS, and CHRISTIANS GO HOME.

"Now, we all know why we're here, and we all know what is to be done. But in order to do what we all know needs to be done, we are going to need more support.

"It was just two years ago that our world government started. Yes, America was back then a democracy, before us, and we had been plundered and squeezed dry by a people who could be ignored no longer. When our democracy failed to stand up for what was right, we converted to an authoritarian state.

"But what does democracy or authoritarian state mean to those hateful bigots? They don't care at all. They are only interested in one thing: Are you willing to accept their nonsense as truth? Yes or no? Are you stupid enough to believe a bunch of fairy tales? Yes or no? And when a democracy is stupid enough not to stand up, then it is good. But when an authoritarian state declares, 'Keep your religion out of our public schools', then that is bad.

"In reality, religion ruled in most democracies. In those countries, in the so-called democracies, science was by no means the main focus of attention. What really mattered was exclusively the belief in the existence of an invisible wizard who created the world using magic tricks. You remember that old pledge, the one that referred to America as 'one Nation under _God_ '. That is to say, the democracies were ruled by millions of Jesus freaks who, ultimately, lead the people into accepting God and rejecting science. They are not interested at all in the _minorities_ of people; not the atheists, or even the Jews -"

" **CHRISTIANS!** " shouted an audience member.

"They are the only ones who can be addressed as international elements because they have spread their filth everywhere! They started nearly two millennia ago, in Jerusalem. They spread their message throughout all of Judea, and Samaria, and throughout the Mediterranean. They crossed the Black Sea and spread it to Eastern Europe - Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. They spread northward to Central Europe and further to Scandinavia, and if that wasn't enough, they later migrated from there to the New World to convert all the natives in North and South America! Every corner of the earth has been poisoned by the Christian Gospel. It is an international conspiracy that is turning the people against science, that does not want the atheists to have peace.

"They can suppress us. They can kill us if you like, but we will not convert! For the sake of the atheist people, hail Science!"

" _Hail Science!"_ echoed the audience.

"We may have managed to destroy Christianity in Panem, but we have not destroyed theism. Look around you."

The people examined their surroundings. There were statues of pagan gods everywhere where Christian statues used to be. This ignited some gasps from the audience.

"You see," continued Stennis, "elimination of one religion, even if it's the biggest one, isn't enough. It is in human nature to find another beacon to worship, even if it's just a dead statue of one of the gods of the Old World. How abominable one must be, to have enough loyalty to Science to denounce the Christian god, only to turn their back on Science again and worship another one instead. This cannot be tolerated!"

The audience cheered again.

"Fellow atheists," he continued, "our numbers have grown and now, together, we have the power to change the world! Now I believe we should take to the street and march in unwavering support of Science! With our pitchforks and torches in hand, we will crush all remaining beacons of worship. Topple statues! Burn temples! Eat the Flying Spaghetti Monster! And as we march for Science, we should also _voice_ our support! So, when I say, 'Now is time for revenge', you say 'We must exterminate theism!'

"Now is time for revenge!"

The audience replied, " _We must exterminate theism!"_

Stennis jumped off the podium and pointed down the street. "Alright, everyone! Forward, march!" Then, leading their march down the street, he shouted, "Now is time to clean!"

The audience replied, " _We must exterminate theism!"_

"Now is time for revenge!"

" _We must exterminate theism!_

 _Tokyo Imperial Palace, Laponia_

After hours of nailing and painting wooden planks, Josh was standing outside the Tokyo Imperial Palace once again, this time with the rest holding a picket sign with the Japanese character that represented "hate", but overlaid with a "no" sign.

"No hate!" shouted Tomomi through a megaphone.

" _In our state!"_ answered the SJWs and Josh, holding their signs.

"No hate!"

" _In our state!"_

"No hate!"

" _In our state!"_

"No hate!"

" _In our state!"_

Just then, the Emperor stuck his head out the window, wearing a nightcap. "Excuse me, do you know what time it is?" he shouted. "Is nine PM! Can you protest little quieter?"

"Mmm! Those atheist tears are _so_ delicious!" shouted Atsui, holding a coffee mug.

Tomomi shouted into the park. "People of Tokyo! You have been cheated and lied to! Gentle Christians shall no longer suffer from the noxious rule of atheism!" Some civilians had started to gather around.

"What is that girl talking about?" asked a Japanese man.

"I do not know," replied his friend, "but she has megaphone!"

"We will dismantle oppression board by board!" ze continued. "We will saw the foundation of the United Atheist League in half, even if it takes… um… all night!"

"I do not know what she's talking about, but it sure sounds convincing!" said an elderly Japanese woman to her husband.

"With your support, we will send hammer of people's will crashing through window of Emperor Akihito's house of servitude!" Ze put down the megaphone and the people surrounding cheered.

Emperor Akihito stuck his head out the window again. "Did you no hear me?!" he shouted. "Be quiet!"

He slammed the window shut. However, as soon as he did, a sledgehammer came crashing through, showering him and his bed in broken glass. "Wow," he said to himself. "They no kidding when they said they said they send hammer crashing through my window. The opposition must be silenced!" Akihito put on his robe and floated out the window, then descended before the crowd of people outside his palace.

"I gave you chance to be good and leave me alone," he said. "Now you will perish!"

"We no afraid of you!" shouted an old man, throwing a rock at him.

Before the rock could touch Akihito's head, it slowed to a stop, then dropped to the ground. "You call that stone?" mocked Akihito. "No… _This_ is stone!" He raised his hands, causing a mountain of earth to raise before the crowd. Akihito levitated behind the stone formation, concentrating very hard. Then, with great force, he drove his hand into the formation, causing it to shatter into thousands of smaller rocks that rained down upon the crowd.

"Take cover!" shoutd Josh. Everybody crouched of the ground, covering their heads. Then Akihito threw a fireball down into the crowd, causing everyone to panic and run around.

"Get in the river!" shouted Josh. "That's how I escaped him last time!"

The SJWs dove into the river. Akihito continued throwing fireballs, causing the water to boil and steam. "We must swim back to the city!" choked Dosei.

When they arrived back in Shiroi's mom's basement, they draped their wet clothes on a heater and put on pajamas that were in the drawer. Then they all sat on the smelly mattress with a blanket covering them. MangaGirl2500 was watching a romantic gay anime on his laptop next to Josh.

"Man, that was a total bust," said Josh.

"Triggered. Triggered. Triggered," Atsui started chanting.

"Uh, what is she saying?"

"Atsui suffers from chronic hypervigilance," said Tomomi, pouring tea into cups on a tray. "She gets PTSD very easily. You must have triggered it."

"Sorry," said Josh. "Can I have some of that tea you're making?"

Tomomi made a face. "Ladies first! Wait until I give some to all girls first, you chauvinist pig!"

Josh impatiently averted his eyes from hir ("hir" was another pronoun ze preferred). These SJWs were difficult for him to tolerate. If both genders are equal, why did the girls have the privilege of getting everything first? If the rule was "men first" would they still abide by it? Either way, if he was going to be with them, that was something he had to learn: Tolerance.

Tomomi handed him a saucer with a cup of ryokucha. He sipped it carefully. "I still don't see how you think you're so great. I mean, all we did was stand outside the palace to protest Christian persecution, and we got our butts kicked - a second time for me! I mean, at least when I had gone alone, I had a handgun. What were you expecting to accomplish with a bunch of shouting and picket signs?"

Tomomi glared. "You underestimate power of social justice. We usually no expose our newest members to this, but it might be better if you learn it now. MangaGirl2500, if you would."

MangaGirl2500 closed the anime and opened a new tab. Josh watched him type in the URL bar: " ". The next webpage he saw was a blue background with a chat room filled with bunch of posts from various users. "What is this website?" asked Josh.

"This, my friend, is not just website. This is . This is what all our most powerful warriors use to tap into social justice force. Only with this power can you defeat Emperor Akihito. Are you ready?"

Josh nodded. "Sure, hit me up, fam."

"Plug him in." Dosei nodded and got up from the mattress. He pulled out a slew of cables from the drawer and plugged them all into one giant port in the computer. Meanwhile, Ren produced a large helmet with a bunch of ports on it. He stuck it on Josh's head and helped Dosei plug the cables into it.

"Woah! What are you doing to me?!" exclaimed Josh.

"You might feel bit of shock," said Ren. He looked over to MangaGirl2500. MangaGirl2500 nodded and pressed a key on the keyboard while Ren simultaneously flicked a switch on the helmet. Josh felt a jolt of electricity and fell unconscious.

"By tomorrow morning," said Tomomi, "he will have mastered ancient martial art of tongue-fu."

 _New Delhi, Indo-Pacifica_

Ayisha stood with Parveen and the rest of the Indian SJWs in the streets of New Delhi. "This is how we warriors fight. With loud voices and picket signs. So speak up, lest your cause be ignored!" She handed Ayisha a megaphone. Ayisha quietly spoke into it.

"Um, hello, can I have everyone's atten-"

"No!" shouted Parveen. "Loud! Assertive! Demanding!"

"Alright, look, everyone, I would like to demand-"

"Give me that!" said Parveen. She started screaming like a maniac into the microphone. Ayisha fell to her knees and covered her ears in pain.

"We, the people of Indo-Pacifica, are sick and tired of the anti-Christian anti-theistic regulations of our government! We will stand with the Christians until the very end! End the unholy war now!" She put down the megaphone. "Like that! See all the attention we drew to ourselves?"

Ayisha furrowed her brow. "Parveen, I don't think this is a great way to represent our cause -"

Parveen started screaming again like the crazy feminazi she was. "Atheists are oppressors! Stop their hate speech! Religious freedom!"

Just then a police hover car pulled up beside the protesters. An Indian sheriff in khaki uniforms stepped out. "Listen, we have been getting a lot of complaints from civilians about some yelling going on here, could you please tone it down a bit?"

Parveen put the megaphone in his face. "NO!" she yelled.

"Alright, madam, clearly you are displaying signs of aggression. We have not had to deal with your level of civil disobedience since we dealt with that hippie in 1948. So please, spare us all a tummy ache (so to speak) and place both hands on the vehicle."

"NEVER!" she yelled. She turned away from him and continued yelling: "We will suffer these haters no longer! We are the ninety-nine percent! YAAAHHH!"

"Well, technically, my religion only makes up 35% of the world population," said Ayisha.

"Madam, please comply, or I will have to use force," warned the sheriff.

"Parveen, please, I don't want to get in trouble again -"

"You got to fight! For your right! To worship and pray! In your own way!"

Then the sheriff pulled out a walkie-talkie. "I am going to need some backup. These protesters are being defiant." He pulled a taser out and zapped Parveen with it, causing her to drop her megaphone and fall to the ground.

"Ahh! Misogyny!" she screamed. The sheriff put handcuffs on her.

"Madam, you are under arrest for speaking out against science. You have the right to… eh… well, you have no rights."

She started to kick and scream as the sheriff carried her to his car. "Somebody stop this brutal police officer! I am getting raped! Is there a safe space here?!"

"Oh, we have got a nice safe safe space for you," said the sheriff. "In jail."

Then a hoard of hovercars descended from the sky. Police officers came out and started beating up the SJWs with their truncheons. Ayisha tried to run, but her legs were still sore. She felt the blow of a truncheon against her already damaged and bandaged head before she was knocked unconscious and taken away.

 _South Park, Colorado, Panamerica_

"Alright, Team A, we have arrived at the source of the signal," said Jude. "Are you all ready?"

David, Martin, Mina and Amy saluted him, now wearing proper uniforms: They were now wearing black jumpsuits with bulletproof vests, balaclavas and ballistic helmets. They also had black combat gloves and boots. And they all had parachutes.

"Say, Pastor Jude," said David, "how was it again you were able to purchase all this? The airship, the ballistic uniforms…?"

"Remember a few years ago when I told you to buy all the gold you could before the Jews get it all?" asked Jude.

"Yeah," said David, scratching his neck. "You lived a minimalistic life back then. I called you a crazy-conspiracy-prepper nut."

"Ah, but little did you know," said Jude, "was that I secretly had a safe full of gold bullion that I had acquired in Africa. When the war started, I knew the prices would shoot through the roof.

"And what about coin? You told me it was just some fad. But I bought thousands worth of coins when they first started. And now coin is the world currency! Well, who is crazy now?"

"I am," said Mina. "I'm about to jump out of a blimp into the Rocky Mountains."

"Come on," said Jude. "Let's pray." He formed a circle with the members of Team A. They all bowed their heads and closed their eyes. "Father, we have received this signal from an unknown source. We trust that you will keep these brave men and women safe as they investigate it. In Jesus's name we pray, amen."

He opened the door. The quartet felt the cold wind rush in. Then, all at once, they jumped. As they were falling, David shouted, "Come on! Let's form a square!" Martin, Mina and Amy started moving their hands toward him. He grabbed Mina's right hand and Amy's left. Mina and Amy held onto Martin with their other hands. "This way we won't drift apart," David explained.

The snow-white mountain range beneath them was expanding at an accelerating rate. "Looks like about 5,000 feet," shouted Amy. "Should we deploy the parachutes now?"

"Yes," David shouted back. "Let go."

They started to drift away again. David pulled the string on his pack. Seeing him rocket upward, Amy did the same, then did Martin and Mina.

They landed in a pine forest at the base of the mountains. "This area is uninhabited," said Amy. "Who could have sent the signal?"

"It must be some sort of secret base!" suggested Martin, as he began cutting the strings off his parachute.

David pulled out a handheld device with a radar. On the screen it showed a green dot nearby. "It's just a few hundred meters west-southwest."

As they started walking, the green dot came closer and closer to the center of the screen. Amy looked up at the snow-covered pines. The snow blocked much of the background noise of the forest, making it nearly silent, save for the wind. "This is so peaceful," she said. "It almost makes you forget about the atheist and the world government."

"It sure does," agreed Mina. "Colorado is such a beautiful state. Can you believe those people think it all came from nothing?"

"Hey, guys, check that out," said David, pointing forward.

When it looked like they were right on top of the signal, they looked ahead and saw a glade in the midst of the pines.

"I'll bet the source of that signal is in that open area," said David. But when he reached the place, his facial expression turned to perplexion. "What the…"

In the middle of the area was what looked like a miniature stable - only about a meter tall - with only three walls (the front was completely open). On the roof of the stable was a five-pointed star that looked like paper mache and tape. And in the middle of the stable was a manger full of hay. Around the manger were a whole bunch of forest animals: a squirrel, a rabbit, a beaver, a bear, a porcupine, a skunk, a vixen, a doe, a woodpecker, a mouse, a chickadee, and a raccoon.

"What are they -" Martin began.

"Shh!" David whispered. "This is cool! Let's try not to spook them!"

The four of them carefully watched the animals in the stable. They weren't really doing anything. The rabbit scratched his head with his foot, the chickadee poked her beak around in the manger, while the woodpecker drove hers repeatedly into the post of the stable. Then, something very strange happened: The squirrel started talking. In English (albeit in a midwestern accent).

"I guess we might as well give up all hope," he said. "Without the lord's help, I ought to say we're all doomed."

The animals all sighed in disappointment. "But we sent that SOS signal from the star-shaped radio tower on top of our stable," said the bear cub. "I was near certain someone would come to help us."

" _They're_ the ones who sent the signal?!" Amy exclaimed softly. "How is that even possible?"

"We came here to help them, so let us find out!" said Martin.

"Alright," David replied. "But let's move slowly. They might not be used to people."

The four started moving into the glade. "Hey, look!" said the mouse. "Maybe they can help us!"

The animals all cheered and ran up to the four. "Well, I guess they're used to people," said David.

Martin kneeled down and patted the fox's head. "Aww…" he murmured.

"They're adorable!" cried Mina. The chickadee landed on her finger. She scratched beneath her beak with her little finger.

The squirrel hopped up before David. "You're here to help us, aren't you? Allow us to introduce ourselves. We have very interesting names, we do."

"Er, what's your name?" asked David.

"I'm Mr. Squirrely the Squirrel!" he replied. "And this is Mr. Rabbity the Rabbit, Mr. Beavery the Beaver, Mr. Beary the Bear, Miss Porcupiney the Porcupine, Mr. Skunky the Skunk, Miss Foxy the Fox, Miss Deery the Deer, Miss Woodpeckery the Woodpecker, Mr. Mousy the Mouse, Miss Chickadee-y the Chickadee, and Mr. Raccoony the Raccoon."

"Nice to meet you," said David, holding out his finger. Squirrely shook it with his paws. "I'm Reverend David Hill, and these are my brother and sisters in the Lord, Martin, Mina and Amy."

"Well, ain't that swell!" exclaimed Raccoony. "We're brothers and sisters in the lord as well!"

"A friend of God is a friend of mine," said Amy, feeding Deery some buds from a branch. "What did you need our help for?"

"Well, as you know, a lot of very bad things have been happening in the world lately," said Squirrely. "We know we can't fight this battle alone. So we need to bring back the Messiah to help us!"

"Wait. You actually want to bring Him back?" exclaimed Martin.

"Yes!" said David. "The Bible said that one day the Messiah would return! He could be our only hope!"

"Yeah, but how are _we_ going to help?" asked Mina.

"Well," said Beary, "in order to summon the Messiah, we also need help from the Princess."

"The… Princess?" echoed Amy.

"The Princess!" cried Porcupiney. "The _beautiful_ Princess! She lives in the city of water!"

"We also need the great stone rod she rules over her kingdom with, the Scepter of Darkness!" added Rabbity.

"So you, a bunch of woodland animals who we just met, want us to travel over 5,000 miles to a foreign country to bring you back an elite noblewoman and a sacred royal artifact, while constantly under the risk of being detained?"

"Yeah, that pretty much sums it up," said Squirrely.

"Seems legit," said David. "I don't know how a Princess or some weird scepter will help us, but I'll do anything I can to bring back the Messiah.

"Me too!" agreed Martin.

"I'm all in," said Mina.

"I know we can do this!" shouted Amy, raising her fist.

" _Hooray!"_ the animals cheered.

 _The skies above Panamerica - en route westward to Laponia_

"Jude? Come in, Pastor, we have important news!"

Jude went to the microphone on the control panel. "What is it, Pastor David?"

"We found the source of the signal. It was coming from some stable in the middle of the woods, inhabited by a hoard of talking woodland creatures!"

"That's crazy!" exclaimed Silver the Hedgehog. "Who's ever heard of talking talking woodland animals?"

"What did you find out from them?" asked Jude.

"Look, it's a long story, but we found out how to fix everything," said David. "We're going to the city of water to complete our mission."

"What, Soleanna?" said Jude. "That's all the way in Eurasia! I will hit the recall and teleport you all back to the ship."

"No!" shouted David. "You can't waste more time making a detour for us; you gotta go to Laponia and Indo-Pacifica to find Josh and Ayisha! We'll take a flight."

"Okay, but be careful. You are all on the FBI's most wanted list."

"We will be. See you around."

"Could it be true?" asked Grace. "Could all of our problems be resolved?"

Jude rubbed his chin. "I believe all things are possible with God. But I am quite skeptical about these new allies of ours. How to we know that they're trustworthy?"

"How could you not trust adorable little forest animals? How could they ever hurt us?"

"I am just saying!" said Jude. "I am just saying that this all seems a bit strange."

Just then they heard a loud explosion coming from the back cabin, the room with the foam mats and the oxygen-masks. Misrab dropped his Bible on the floor. "Not again!" he shouted.

"WARNING! WARNING! THIS UNIT * _KZZT!_ * CRITICAL DAMAGE!" said a robotic voice, as red lights began flashing in the room.

Jude rushed into the room to see what had happened. His jaw dropped to the floor. "They…! They blew a hole right through the back of the car!"

"What?!" shouted Shen. "Who?"

Jude opened the door of the room and pointed. In the cold wind, Misrab could see the foam mats fluttering away down into the sea of clouds. It made him dizzy. But what Jude was pointing at scared him more: an armada of fighter jets was fast approaching the airship. The jets had the Jew star logo on them. Bullets began whizzing past their heads. "Get down!" shouted Jude, crouching on the floor.

"Forget that!" said Misrab, yanking at Jude's collar. "Just shut the door!"

They ran back into the map room and slammed the metal door shut. They could hear bullets rickoshaying off the other side of it.

"What's going on?!" screamed Grace, hiding under the map table with Shen.

"A whole armada of Jewish fighter jets! They've found us!" said Jude.

" _Oy!_ We got them good, eh, Reuben?" said officer Mordecai into his headset, flying in his fighter jet.

"We sure did, Mordecai!" replied officer Reuben, flying in his own jet. "Did you see that missile I sent, right into the back of their gondola?"

"How could I miss it?" laughed Mordecai. "That explosion nearly blinded me!"

"Serves 'em right, huh? After all, we know now that that's the flying machine that Judpheus is using as his base of operations."

"Ooh, I hate that Judpheus goy!" said Mordecai. "We were so close to getting David and Josh to accept the Mark of the Beast back in Hope Springs, then he comes along and takes them away!"

"Tell me about it," said Reuben. "My neck still hurts from where Judpheus hit me. And David and Josh have joined forces with him. But now that they're up on that airship, we can punish all three of them - by blowing them out of the sky!"

Meanwhile, back on the ship, everyone was panicking. Grace and Misrab were hiding under the map table. Silver was using his telekinesis to move a bunch of crates in front of the door.

"What can we do?" cried Grace. "We're badly damaged, and the armada is closing in on us!"

"I do not know!" said Jude. "I do not know if Battle Mode will work when the ship is in this condition!"

"Attention, Tribulation Force!" shouted the voice of officer Mordecai from the other side of the door. "Your two members, Reverend David Hill and Josh Wheaton, have double crossed us for the last time! Surrender them now, or we will destroy you all!"

"That's it!" exclaimed Jude. "They're looking for David and Josh! We just need to tell them they're not here!"

Jude spoke into the microphone. His voice rang out from a megaphone on the exterior of his ship. "David Hill and Josh Wheaton are no longer with us!" he said.

"WHAT?!" shouted Mordecai and Reuben in unison.

Misrab rushed over to the microphone. "Joke is on you, losers!" he sneered. "Josh is all the way in Tokyo, and David is going on a top-secret mission in Soleanna! You came all the way up here for nothing!" Misrab started laughing hysterically. But his laughing started quieting down as he noticed everybody in the room glaring at him. "Oops," he peeped.

Mordecai grinned. "Well well well," he said. "You all heard the towel-head! Our targets are in Laponia and Soleanna! As, for _you_ -" he said, in reference to the Trib Force, "-much as I would like to turn your precious base into scrap metal, I have some business to take care of! _Shalom!_ "

Half the armada sped past the airship, and the other half rushed away into the distance. "Great," said Silver. "Now our enemies know where our friends are. There's no way we'll get to Tokyo before they do!"

"It's okay," said Jude. "We prayed for them, didn't we? We know they'll be safe."

 _Tokyo Imperial Palace, Laponia_

Josh was marching back to the palace with the SJWs. It was early morning in Laponia, and having learned Tongue-fu, he was more dangerous than ever before. When he reached the entrance, two guards stepped in front of the door. Josh punched the door between them with the fist of feminism, causing it to disintegrate. Josh glared at the guards. The guards looked at each other, and, without a word, let him through.

"Emperor Akihito!" shouted Josh. "Show yourself! I'm not finished with you yet!"

A Japanese woman with a painted face and carrying a tray of food walked over to Josh. "His Majesty is on his early-morning nature jog through his orchard. What is left of it, anyway."

Josh looked at the woman. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Housework," she replied, nervously.

"Cuck!" shouted Josh. "Don't take this garbage! Women can do anything men can do! This is internalized sexism!" A wave of social justice energy burst across the room, causing the woman to fall to the floor and drop her tray.

"But I-"

"And why is your face painted?!"

The woman was trembling. "To make myself look beautiful…"

"You use cosmetics to make yourself beautiful? Why? Why do you have to conform to men's standards as what is considered beautiful?" Another wave burst from him.

"Well -"

"And why white? Why not black? Are you implying that black people can't be beautiful?"

A third wave. The woman was in much pain now.

"I could paint my face black, if that is -"

"That's racist!" Josh screamed. "What is this, the 1950s? You can't go around wearing blackface!"

The fourth wave knocked her out cold. Josh left the palace. "He wasn't in the palace," he said to Tomomi. "But I totally pwned that sexist racist housewi- houseperson."

"He must be around here somewhere," ze replied.

"There. In the orchard." Josh pointed at the old man running through the burnt trees with his exercise clothes on.

"You again!" shouted Emperor Akihito. "I thought you were gone for sure last night! This time, Josh Wheaton, I will not leave you window for escape." Akihito flew over to Josh and took a drink from his water bottle before dropping it on the ground. "I hope you are ready to fight me like a man."

Josh's triggering intensified. "Why?" he said, his back toward Akihito. "Are you implying that _women can't fight?_ " With those last three words, a wave of social justice energy burst from his body, more powerful than ever before. Akihito was flung onto his back into the grass.

"Wh-what? No! What I meant was, ah, I hope, ah, how you say, I hope you got your big boy britches on?"

"'Big boy'?" repeated Josh. "What's wrong with being little? Do you have something against midgets? What are you, an achondroplasiaphobe?" Another wave hit Akihito just as he had been trying to get up.

"No! I have plenty of small friends here in Tokyo!"

"What, so every Japanese person in the world is a midget?" said Josh. " _That's racist!"_ This wave hit Akihito so hard he rolled into a tree stump.

Dazed, Akihito said, "Wh-what is this?"

"I have learned the ways of the Social Justice Warrior," said Josh. "Fight me. Perish by the sword of my self-righteousness." Josh created a flaming sword of pure social justice energy.

Akihito stood up and brushed himself off. "Fine. If fight you want, is fight you get!" He pulled out two katanas and rushed back toward Josh. Josh simply stood motionless with his flaming sword. Akihito yelled " _Hai!"_ But just as he slashed his blades down, Josh cut them both off the handles with one swift motion. "Fool!" he shouted. "Equality is sharper than steel!"

The blade stuck into the soil behind them. "Why you…" said Akihito. He ran away from Josh. He levitated into the sky and created a fireball. " _Hinotama!"_ he shouted as he threw it at Josh. But Josh simply knocked the fireball straight back to him in the sky. It blew up right in his face and caused him to fall to the earth again.

"Get up," said Josh, pointing his sword at Akihito's throat. "Get up so I can knock you back down. Your efforts are futile." He withdrew the sword to see what he would do.

Shaking, Akihito got back on his feet. Then he began shouting angrily. " _Haaa…!"_

Josh was confused. What was he doing, having a temper tantrum?

" _...aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…!"_

This was starting to grow tedious for Josh. He just figured he would leave the man alone before he burst a blood vessel. Until…

" _...AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…!"_

His shouting was getting louder and louder. It grew so loud he felt like his head was vibrating. He dropped his flame sword and covered his ears. But it was still coming through. And now it felt like the ground itself was shaking.

" _...AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…!"_

The ground wasn't just shaking. The rocks and stones around the yard were somehow being levitated. Josh looked around. Some of the trees of the orcharch were being uprooted and shot into the sky. It was at this moment Josh realized he was sweating profusely. Akihito's body was somehow radiating heat and light like an active volcano. Akihito's feet were sinking into the earth. And his shouting was getting louder still.

" _ **...AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"**_

 _KABOOM!_

There was a massive explosion in front of Josh. A laser shot out from Akihito into the heavens like a beacon. Josh was thrown back against the outside wall of the palace with great force. Josh rubbed his eyes and looked to where Akihito had been standing. There was now a huge crater there. Akihito was hovering above it. His body was immersed in a fiery aura. His gray, slicked back hair was neither gray nor slicked back; had it become blonde? No, it was richer: it was a golden yellow, and was standing on end, spiky, like rising flames. And his muscles had grown so large, he had torn out of his exercise clothes and was left only wearing his black spandex underwear.

The now-Super Akihito teleported right in front of Josh. He pointed down at his face, and said " _Omae wa mou shindeiru."_

"What," was all Josh could muster before Super Akihito started whaling repeatedly on Josh's stomach. He gave a series of forceful uppercuts to the belly, causing Josh to spit up blood. Then he kicked Josh right between the legs, shooting him straight up into the sky. He teleported up above Josh and Down-B'd him, sending him plummeting to the ground below. Josh's body made a crater beneath Super Akihito.

"Josh is getting his butt kicked!" shouted Atsui. "We have to help him!"

Super Akihito had Josh by the collar of his t-shirt, punching him repeatedly in the face. Josh might as well have been hit in the face with a red-hot iron sledgehammer. His face was being reduced to a bruised and bloody mess. Then, to his relief, the SJWs tackled Super Akihito while he was on Josh.

"Josh!" Tomomi shouted. "We will keep him down! Just run while you still can!"

Josh quickly yet painfully climbed out of the crater and started running. But had no plan to retreat. He just ran far enough away that he could catch his breath. Suddenly he felt a tingling in his back. He started to focus all his social justice energy into one spot.

"Ugh! I cannot hold him much longer!" grunted Shiori.

"He is escaping!" exclaimed Ren.

Super Akihito exploded again. "Get off of me!" he yelled. "Where did he -" He looked over and saw Josh, standing by the palace again. He was yelling, similar to Akihito had.

" _HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA…!"_

"MangaGirl2500," said Dosei. "What does your scouter say about his autism level?"

MangaGirl2500 looked at the numbers increasing on the red eyepiece he was wearing. "It is at level thought to be impossible," he replied.

"Nonsense! Just tell me where he is at!"

The numbers were increasing rapidly. "He… he has ascended past TrueLoveHeart94 in autism levels."

"Dear Michael," said Dosei fearfully. "Tumblr may have taught him… _too well_."

" _ **...AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"**_

 _KABOOM!_

Josh had evolved into a Triggered Super Saiyan. His hair had turned long and spiky like Akihito's had, but it was not golden. It was rainbow.

Super Triggered Josh teleported in front of Super Akihito. He charged up his feminist fist and falcon-punched Super Akihito out of the park and into the city. Akihito's body blasted through ten skyscrapers before one managed to stop him. Super Akihito levitated off the last building and brushed the concrete and broken glass off of him. Then he started flying back toward his palace. He flew faster and faster, until he broke the sound barrier - and subsequently all the windows in his vicinity.

But Super Triggered Josh was already on his way. He was flying at supersonic speed directly toward Super Akihito.

 _*INSERT ANOTHER DBZ SOUND*_

The impact of the collision caused a massive explosion in the sky. Waves of fire went over the face of the city, shattering windows and collapsing houses. There was now a huge crater beneath them. Civilians were running away from the epic battle and hiding in their earthquake shelters, lest they be slain by the sheer epicness of it.

Somehow, neither of two were badly harmed by the impact. They were mostly tired from having flown so fast and so far. "You are weak," said Super Akihito. "Surrender now or I will destroy you."

"You call _this_ weak?!" screamed Super Triggered Josh. He hit the down-B on Super Akihito and drove him deep into the crater below them. Then he flew way up into the sky. When he felt he was high enough, he drew his hands to his side, cupped together. Then he focused his social justice energy into his hands. When the energy ball in his hands was the size of an exercise ball, he thrusted it forward, saying " _Ka-me-ha-me-HA!"_ A beam of pure social justice energy blasted out directly onto Super Akihito. The crater was now miles deep.

Super Triggered Josh descended into the enormous hole, having put an end to Super Akihito. But as he descended, he saw a bright reddish light growing larger and larger. He then began to notice it was growing warmer in the hole. He soon realized that the light he saw was hot lava rushing up toward him. _Crap,_ Super Triggered Josh thought. He had inadvertently created a volcano. He had to fly back out of there as soon as possible.

As soon as he got out of the hole, Super Akihito came out of nowhere and socked him right in the gut. "What the-?" exclaimed Super Triggered Josh, gasping for air. "I thought you were done for!"

Super Akihito laughed. "Before you did your little energy blast, I drilled myself through crust of earth all the way to fault line just west of this city," he explained. "I knew your blast would create volcano, so I decide to… _expand_ on it."

"What do you mean?"

"You will find out soon enough. For now, let us continue."

Super Akihito and Super Triggered Josh continued their epic battle. But secretly, Super Triggered Josh feared Super Akihito may have already won.

 _Tihar Prison Complex, Indo-Pacifica_

Ayisha was all alone once again, sitting quietly in her cell. She felt more comfortable now, because she had fresh clean clothes. She was wearing a white and blue saree on her body and a white prison cap over her head bandages. _It's okay,_ she told herself in her head. _Peter was once a prisoner. Paul and Silas were once prisoners, too._ She started to pray for a way to get out.

The sheriff walked in front of her cell door. She could see King Pranab was with him. "Is this the woman?" he asked.

Pranab looked in. "Yes, this is the one."

The door opened. Pranab walked in. "If you had known what was good for you and your cause," he said to Ayisha, "you would have remained dead. Guards!"

Two huge men began beating Ayisha with truncheons until she fell off the bench she was sitting on, unconscious.

"Take her away," said Pranab. "She will be of much greater use while she is alive."

The guards picked up the bruised and bandaged body on the floor and carried her out of the cell. They brought her into the interrogation room and strapped her to a chair.

Hours later, Ayisha blinked her eyes open. She was even more sore than she had been before. She tried to move her hand but couldn't. She tried moving a leg. Nothing. She tried to lean forward. Nada. Now she was starting to panic. She was breathing heavily, sweat dripping down her face (even though it was quite chilly in this room). She looked up before her. She was sitting in front of a table. It had some objects on it that she couldn't identify, because they were covered up by a tablecloth. One in particular was large and hemispherical. Behind the table was a huge metal door, and above that, a slogan painted on the wall, in great Gothic letters: ORDER SHALL PREVAIL.

The sheriff walked in. "Ayisha Sittu Khan," he greeted. "Allow me to introduce myself. I am Sheriff Chalavanth. You may call me Chal."

"Please let me go," pleaded Ayisha. "If you let me go, I promise I will never cause trouble in this city again."

Chal put his hands on the tablecloth and lowered his voice. "I am afraid that will not be sufficient. You see, even if you were to leave this place and never return, your group will still be causing trouble elsewhere in the world. That is why we need your help still."

Ayisha furrowed her brow. "I'm afraid I don't understand," she said.

"The Tribulation Force," he said. "We are aware of it. This global conspiracy against atheism. And we know that you are a part of it. You were doing their filthy work when you tried to kill our king. Therefore, you must know some… _things_ about this organization."

"Well, don't think for a minute that I'll tell you a thing about them!"

"I do not think things, child," he whispered. "I am an atheist. I _know_ things." He leaned forward and whispered, "Tell me everything you know about Judpheus and the Tribulation Force."

"No!" Ayisha snapped. "You want to kill them!"

"Yes. And?"

"I don't want you to kill them!"

"Very well. How much will it take for you to give me the information I want?" He held out his right hand. It had the Mark on it. Then he looked at Ayisha's hand. It had no Mark. "What is this? Why do you not have the Mark?"

"It doesn't matter to you," said Ayisha. "I wouldn't betray my friends - my brethren - for all the coins in the world! The digital world, anyway."

"You drive a hard bargain, Ms. Khan," said Chal. "I am afraid I will have to resort to torture." He lifted the tablecloth up from his side so Ayisha couldn't see what he was getting. Then he showed her: an enormous butcher knife. The shiny chrome blade was no less than a foot long.

"Lovely knife, is it not?" said Chal. "This blade is thirty-six centimeters long. It is incredibly sharp, too. It will slide into flesh like warm butter. Care to see a demonstration?"

Ayisha did not answer. She merely trembled in her chair.

Chal set the knife on top of the tablecloth. Then he pulled the dome-shaped object out from underneath the tablecloth. Ayisha realized that this object was a silver platter with a cover on it. Chal set the platter next to the knife. "You must be hungry. You have not eaten in a while, have you? _Bon appetit_." He slowly lifted the cover off the plate. A white steam with an intoxicatingly sweet and savoury aroma that made Ayisha's mouth water rushed out from beneath it. She looked at the plate and saw it: It was a freshly roasted half-ham with pineapple rings on top.

"W-what are you going to do with that?" stammered Ayisha.

Chal smiled evilly. "Well, since your hands are all tied up, I supposed I would help you eat this delicious ham." He produced a meat fork and stabbed it into the ham. Then he took the huge butcher knife and sawed it through the dead meat, causing it's succulent juices to run over the top. He carved a few bite-sized pieces and stabbed them with the fork.

"Th-that is the kryptonite of the Arab people!" cried Ayisha. "Surely you wouldn't -"

"I would and I will," said Chal. "Now open wide."

"Not that! Anything but that! No!"

Ayisha screamed in horror as the flesh of the dead pig was brought closer and closer to her face.

 _South Park, Colorado, Panamerica_

David was riding in the front seat of an SUV while Martin, Mina and Amy sat in the back seats. David checked the time on his communicator. "We were lucky to get the last four seats on that flight to Soleanna," he said. "But it won't matter if we don't get to the flight on time! Can't you drive any faster?"

"I told you once and I'll tell you again," said the angry Uber driver. "The roads are real slippery right now! I gotta take it slow!"

"But it's the middle of April!"

"Well, that's South Park weather for ya," he replied, sipping his coffee. "Snow nine months a year, with a chance it might melt by July."

The driver pulled into Hells Pass Hospital. "Um, where are we?" asked Amy.

"You are at the hospital!" yelled the driver. "Administration is right there!"

"We told you, we need to go to Airport Hilton."

The driver pointed at the door of the building. "Get in there!" he yelled. "Get out of my car now!"

"But -"

"Get out of my car, now!"

"We -"

" **GeT oUt Of My CaR, nOw!"**

"The -"

" **GET. OUT. OF. MY. CAR. NOW. SCIENCE DAMN YOU TO HELL!"**

David turned back to Amy. "Amy, let's go. This guy's crazy."

The four friends hopped out of the vehicle and the driver skidded away. David touched his communicator: "Give me directions to Airport Hilton," he said.

The device displayed a holographic map of the town. They were not far from the airport. "Let's run, guys!"

They ran all the way to the airport with five minutes to spare. After a tedious process with the TSA, they were able to board the plane.

"This is so exciting!" shouted Mina over the sound of the plane engine. "I've never been to Europe!"

"Mina! Don't let it get to your head!" shouted David. "We need to focus on our mission!"

"I know," said Mina. "But couldn't we take a few pictures while we're their? Just to show the others when we get back?"

David groaned. "Fine! But just a few!"

The flight attendant briefed everybody about what to do in an emergency. Then the plane started rolling down the runway. It rolled faster and faster until the force of the wind was pushing up against the wings hard enough to make it airborne.

The flight was going to be nearly thirteen hours. David figured this would be a good time to catch some Z's before his mission. But first he would read the Bible. He opened up to a random page in the New Testament to see what the Lord had to tell him. He was led to Matthew chapter 6. He read the last few verses of the chapter:

"Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

"Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

"Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

"And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

"And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

"Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

"Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

"(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

"But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

David bowed his head and prayed for success in his mission. Then he nodded off to sleep.

Nearly thirteen hours and several packages of peanuts later, the flight attendant announced that they were about to land. The four looked out their windows and saw it: the city of water known to the world as Soleanna. It was quite beautiful.

The plane touched the smooth runway and rolled to a stop at the New City Airport. The passengers were escorted off the plane.

"You booked hotel, right?" said Martin.

David scratched his head. "Yeah, about that… I could only get a room with one queen-sized bed, so… it's gonna be a little crowded tonight."

Martin facepalmed. "Well, if all goes well, we won't need more than a night."

"Right," David replied. "Alright, guys, we have two targets while we're here. We need the princess and her Scepter of Darkness."

"She must live in Soleanna Castle Town!" said Amy. "Let's go there!"

Unfortunately, New City was very large and very difficult to navigate through. They had to keep checking the map on their communicators to see where they were. They eventually came up to a tall stone brick wall embedded in a cliff by the harbor. It had a huge tunnel that led to Castle Town.

"Why would they build half the city on one side of the mountain and the other half on the other side?" asked Mina. "I mean, it should be a piece of cake to get from one side to the other. But we've spent an hour looking for the single road that leads to Castle Town!

Martin scratched his head. "Not very convenient. Especially not for tourists. Whoever designed this place must have been off his rocker."

The four of them walked into the dark tunnel. David looked down and saw that the road was still paved inside it.

"Why would they bother paving the inside of this tunnel? It's not like cars are allowed to be used in the Castle Town. And even if they were, this tunnel is way too small to drive through."

Amy chuckled. "I think the better question is _how_ they paved it in the first place. You couldn't fit a compact hybrid through here, say nothing about a steam roller."

No less than twenty seconds later, they were on the other side of the tunnel. They took in the beauty of the city of water. It had great domed cathedrals and bell towers. There were no paved roads; everybody in the town either used the sidewalk or paddled down the canals in gondolas. The state flag appeared over many buildings and as banners. It was light blue with a white silhouette of an eagle (or was it a hawk? None of them really knew what it was) with it's wings spread, and a white circle above it's head, the symbol of the sun.

"It's a shame, isn't it?" said Amy. "That the people in this beautiful city participate in such abominable acts like sun-worship. I mean, why worship a creation? Why not the Creator Himself?"

"Right?" said David. "If they're worried that the sun won't rise tomorrow or something, then they should be worshipping the same person who made the sun stand still in Gibeon. He's the one they should be afraid of."

They came to the castle where the princess lived. Two guards were blocking the entrance.

"Halt!" said one of them. "State your business."

"We are here to see the princess," said David.

"Her Highness is not in the castle."

"Then where is she?"

The guard pointed at a beige and white-colored building with a clock on the front and a belfry on top. It had three doorways in the front; two on either side of a larger one. The flag of Soleanna was above each of the doorways. "Her Highness is at a congressional with the Senate of Soleanna. She is quite tied up with governmental affairs."

"Look, we need to see the princess!" said Martin. "It is really important!"

"Well, this meeting is important, too," replied the guard. "So if you know what's good for you, you will not interrupt."

The four of them left the castle and went to the parliament building. They navigated through the hall to the Senate Chamber. They heard the echoes of the President of the Senate speaking:

"We're not saying you're _wrong_ , Your Highness. We're just saying what you _believe_ is wrong."

The voice of the princess: "I understand that, Mr. President. But I feel that my people should have the right to believe whatever they think is true."

"The New Order demands that _every_ citizen denounces theism of _all_ kinds! If this nation remains theistic-"

"Okay, now you're starting to raise your voice at me, and I'm not okay with that."

"Apologies, Princess."

David and the others were right outside the chamber, by the door. "Are you hearing this?" David whispered. "They're talking about God!"

"We have already changed our official state religion to atheism. Is that not enough?"

"Enough? With all due respect, Your Highness, you must realize that we are the only nation on earth that has no institutionalized punishments regarding theism. Even Panem, which once held the most religiously tolerant states in the world, has placed Christians into concentration camps. And thanks to recent actions of Robert Stennis, they are now doing the same to other theistic degenerates."

"The governments of neither the United States nor Canada were founded on any religion. So the transition to atheism was relatively easy for them. But my country _was_ founded on theism. My people were not very pleased when our religion was deinstitutionalized, and I believe they would be very _un_ pleased if we started forcing the Party's beliefs down their throats."

"No! Science is the only logical answer, and is thus the only answer for the masses to believe!" The President walked over to a huge painting of Richard Dawkins on the wall. "Let us not forget the great Richard Dawkins who finally freed the world of religion long ago. Dawkins knew that logic and reason were the way of the future. But it wasn't until he met his beautiful wife that he learned using logic and reason isn't enough. You have to be a dick to everyone who doesn't think like you." He turned to the senators, his back facing the princess. "Although you may disagree with my proposition, that is what we have the Senate for. All in favor of -?"

"Princess!"

The senators all turned to the entrance to the chamber and saw David and the others running toward her throne.

"Who are these people?" said the President. "Somebody call security!"

"Wait!" David shouted, stopping before the throne. "This is an emergency! Only the princess can help us!"

The princess looked at them, perplexed. They finally were able to get a good look at her. She had red, shoulder-length hair with fair skin and blue eyes. She was clothed in a white dress with feather trim, long white gloves with a feather trim, and red heels. She was also wearing earrings, a necklace and a crown of white feathers. She looked to be in her late twenties.

"Wow. She is beautiful," said Martin.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Princess, this is about the fate of the world! We need your help!" David pleaded.

"I'm sorry, but I don't know a thing about you. How can I know you're trustworthy?"

"We need your Scepter. It supposedly has magical power or something."

The Princess froze. She lowered her voice. "What scepter?"

"You know, the Scepter of Darkness!" said Mina.

"Miss Elise," said the President, "just what are these buffoons jabbering about?"

"Excuse me," the Princess replied nervously, "I need to have a word with these four in private." She brought them out of the chamber and into the hallway.

"How do you know about my father's Scepter?" she whispered.

"Your father's?" asked David. "We thought it was yours."

"It was an ancient royal artifact that - well, excuse me, allow me to introduce myself. I am Princess Elise the Third. My father, the Duke of Soleanna, was the last to have it. But there was a major accident in his castle twenty-two years ago, and the Scepter hasn't been seen since then."

"Accident?" said Martin. "What happened?"

Elise looked down. "I was only seven then, so I don't really remember," she said. "All I _can_ remember is that my home was destroyed. I was carried away to live in the city. And my father… well… I never saw him again." She bit her tongue to keep from crying.

"I'm sorry," said David, placing his hand on her shoulder.

"I'll tell you what," she said. "Bring me my father's Scepter, and you will gain my trust, and I will help you with whatever it is you need to do."

"Great!" exclaimed Amy. "Where is it?"

"The Scepter is hidden somewhere in the ruins of the ancient castle of Soleanna," she explained. "The castle is in Kingdom Valley, just northwest of the city. If you are able to return the Scepter to me by tomorrow, I will aide you on this mission to save the world."

"Then what are we waiting for?" said Amy. "Let's go!"


	4. Chapter 4: Rescue

_Somewhere above Southern California_

Jude hit a few buttons and switches on the control panel. Everybody felt the ship starting to descend.

"Pastor, why are we landing here?" asked Shen. "We still have to cross the Pacific!"

"Those planes have severely damaged the ship," said Jude. "I need to land in the nearest town so I can refuel the tank and repair the engine."

The ship's base touched the burning hot sand and the engine slowed to a stop. The doors opened and everybody stepped outside.

"Aah!" said Misrab in relief. "It sure is nice to get out and stretch my legs!"

Jude gave him a funny look. "But Misrab, there is plenty of space to stretch your legs in the ship." He shook his head and checked the map on his communicator. "According to my map, there should be a town really close to here."

"Doesn't seem like it," said Grace. "All I see is desert for miles."

"There!" exclaimed Silver, pointing in the distance. The other three went to where he was standing. In the dusty air they saw what looked like a wild west style village, with people riding horses and businesses that shared walls.

"Not much of a town," said Silver, "but I'm sure we could get some fuel and tools there."

"I'm hungry," said Misrab. "Let's find a place to eat we're there, too!"

The five of them started walking to the village. It was hot. Jude, Grace, Misrab and Shen had sweat running down their foreheads. Grace looked at Silver. He didn't seem hot at all.

"How are you not sweating?" she said. "Especially with all that fur!"

"This is nothing," Silver replied, shrugging. "I come from a city that's literally on fire. And besides, I don't have sweat glands like you humans."

They reached the village. It was a quiet place, save for the sound of the wind blowing across the desert. There were only four buildings on either side of the road, and one at the dead end, totaling a mere nine in the whole of the village. There didn't seem to be many people out and about, either. Just a few harsh-looking men, leaning against the walls of businesses, maybe taking a shot or puffing a ciggy.

Jude walked up to a man hitching his horse to a post. He was wearing an eyepatch and a cowboy hat. "Excuse me," said Jude, "do you know where I can get some 100-octane low-lead gasoline for my airship?"

He turned and scowled at Jude. "The hell you talkin' 'bout, pardner? We got a gas station, if that's wut yer lookin' fer." With a shaky hand he pointed across the street.

"Thanks." Jude walked over the station. There was a fat guy in overalls and a baseball cap sitting in a wooden chair on the porch of the building. He was fast asleep. Jude tapped his shoulder. The man immediately awoke and swung at him. "Woah!" Jude shouted. "Watch it!"

"Listen, buckaroo, you startle me again and I'll bust yer science-damned head," the man warned. "Now whaddaya want?"

This guy didn't seem too friendly. "I need a 55-gallon drum of your finest gasoline," replied Jude. "I also need some hardware to work on my airship."

"Hardware?" said the man. "What kinda hardware?"

Jude had made a list. "Well, I need a welding kit, some air sealant, a left-handed flange tuner, some drill bits of the following sizes: -"

"Hey hey!" the man shouted, waving his hand at him. "Enough with all that! Now, look, I don't got no 'welding-kits' or 'left-handed-whatchamacallits', but I got the tool fer you. Wait out here a minute."

The man got up from the chair and entered the shop. He brought out a silvery-teal device that looked like a metal arm gauntlet.

"This here new-fangled piece of tech is a hardware store you can wear on your arm," the man explained. "The Omni-Tool. It's a handheld device that… uh…" He pulled out the user manual and started to read the description. "'That… combines a computer microframe, sensor analysis pack, and a minifacturing fabricator. Versatile and reliable, the Omni-Tool can be used to analyze and adjust the functionality of most equipment, including weapons and armour, from a distance. The fabrication module can rapidly assemble small three-dimensional objects from common, reusable industrial plastics, ceramics, and light alloys. This allows for field repairs and modifications to most standard items, as well as the reuse of salvaged equipment.' Wow, can't believe I read all that."

"That will be perfect!" cried Jude. "How much for it?"

"How much ya got, partner?"

Jude pulled a tiny, shimmering wafer from his pocket. "I'll give you an ounce."

The man's eyes nearly popped out of his head. "Wut in tarnation?!" He pulled out a glock and pointed it at Jude. "You messin' with me, partner? The Jews took away all our gold long ago."

"Hey! Put that down!" Jude shouted. "I swear it is real! Go ahead, take it!"

The man put down the gun and took the small square. He held it up to the sun and looked at it through a loupe. Then he put it between his teeth and bit down on it. Taking one more glance, he said, "Well, it's the real deal, all right. Here's the device -" He gave Jude the Omni-Tool. Then he went inside and rolled out a drum of fuel. "- and here's the gas. Now, if you was smart, you'd get right on outta here."

Jude painfully uprighted the drum. "Why is that?" he grunted.

"Cuz' this here is Wild Ridge, the roughest, toughest town in the county. Ain't no strangers come here more than a day and leave alive."

Jude gulped.

"It's mainly thanks to our sheriff," he continued. "Only law he got in this town is no outsiders. Besides that, it's dog-eat-dog out here. Ya either live fer yerself, or ya die."

"We were not planning to stay long," said Jude. "I am just trying to repair my airship."

"Well, I kinda like you, pardner," said the man. "Tell ya wut. Since ya gave me this here gold, I won't report ya. But I don't wanna see your hide in this town again, ya hear?"

Jude nodded, then shook his head. "Yes - no sir." He put on the arm gauntlet and stepped off the porch. Maybe Silver could use his powers to carry the drum back to the ship? There was really no other way. The barrel must have weighed more than 300 pounds. Jude decided to call him.

Meanwhile, Silver, Misrab, Grace and Shen were sitting at the counter in the bar and grill restaurant at the other side of the small village. They were reading the menus as upbeat tavern music was being played on the honkey tonk piano.

"Go fish," said a man sitting at a table behind them, playing cards.

"The hell you mean, 'go fish'?" said the guy he was playing cards with. "There ain't no 'go fish' in five card draw!"

The other guy held up a fist. "You sassin' me, punk?"

"Yeah," replied the other man, standing up. "Ya wanna make somethin' outta it?"

"Put 'em up, pardner!" he shouted. "I'll knock you down so hard you'll feel it next year!"

The two of them got in a tooth-and-nail fight right in the middle of the bar, knocking down tables and breaking glasses. They fought their way outside, leaving the three of them staring at the door in fear.

Grace shook her head and looked back at her menu. "How does chips and salsa sound for an appetizer?"

"I can live with that," Misrab replied.

"Same here," said Silver.

"What is 'salsa'?" asked Shen.

"You'll like it." Grace told the bartender: "We'll have the chips and salsa. And four ice teas."

"Make that five," said Misrab. "Pastor Jude will probably be here, too."

"Listen miss," said the slick, mustachioed man, polishing a glass, "we don't got nonna this 'ice tea'. We serve hard drinks for punks who wanna get hammered in an hour."

"Water's fine."

"Water?!" The bartender guffawed. "Cali's been dry as a bone for years! Our water's more expensive than our liquor."

Grace sighed. "What's your weakest beverage?"

The bartender set the glass on the counter. "We got yellow ale, diluted to about 5%. Think ya can handle it?"

Grace looked at Silver. He didn't quite look like an adult, but it was hard to tell since he was a hedgehog. "How old are you again?"

"Fourteen," Silver replied.

"So you're too young to drink."

The bartender put his hands on the table. "Everybody in this here town knows there ain't no laws against booze. In fact, only law we got around here is no outsiders. Y'all sure yer from around here?"

"No!" said Grace. "I mean, yes! Er - I mean - we are!"

The waiter stared long and hard at them. A middle-aged blonde woman, a bearded middle-eastern man, a beaten-up Chinese man wearing a prison uniform, and a silvery hedgehog creature wearing clothes that looked like they were from _Tron_. All of these inside a tavern for cowboys.

"Eh, maybe." He went to the tap and filled five pint-sized glasses with tan, foamy fluid. Holding two in each hand, he set them all on the table. "Here ya go. We'll bring yer chips out soon."

The four of them sipped on the ale. Silver had never tasted alcohol before. He was not very fond of the taste of the ale; it was distinctly bitter and made the back of his throat burn. He made a face and coughed hard after drinking it.

"Ya think that's bad?" The bartender laughed as he brought out the chips. "That's five percent. Ya oughta try the firewater. A shot ah that'll knock ya out!" He set the chips on the table. "Now, ya wanna order some real food?"

Silver looked at his menu some more. Then something caught his eye:

 **TUNA MELT** Ⓤ

 **Fresh Pacific tuna salad sandwich grilled with**

 **tomatoes and two slices of swiss cheese.**

 **Served with mustard and/or mayonnaise and**

 **black pepper.**

 **0.001Ƀ**

" _That's_ what a tuna melt is?" said Silver. "That sounds delicious!"

Misrab nodded. "Let's get four of those."

"Let me see yer ID," said the bartender.

They all glanced at each other. "Uh, what do you need our ID for?" asked Grace.

"Aw, shucks!" cried the bartender. "Everybody knows tuna melts is a luxury fer the Jews only! Look here: -" He picked up the menu and pointed to the symbol next to the product name. "Ya see that little 'U' right there? That's the symbol of the Orthodox Union. That means the Jews are the only ones who can have tuna melts."

"Hold up," said Misrab. "Are you telling me that you only serve that one product to Jewish people?"

The bartender shook his head. "Not just in my tavern; in the whole world. Not one goy in the world has legally held a tuna melt since 2016. Now, are y'all Jewish or ain't ya?"

"We _ain't_."

"Do ya have any Jewish parents? Grandparents?"

"No."

"Then ya ain't gettin' no tuna melt! Order somethin' else!"

Silver hung his head low in disappointment. Grace put her hand on Silver's furry shoulder. "Don't worry," she said. "Once we get our freedom back, we'll have all the tuna melts we could ever want."

Silver nodded and looked back through his menu. They ordered four horribly unkosher club sandwiches instead. Misrab at least ordered his without the bacon and ham. The bartender told them the sandwiches would be out in a couple of minutes. Just then Silver received a call on his communicator from Jude.

"Silver! I could use your help! I'm at the gas station."

"Sure thing," Silver replied. Then he said to the others: "I'm gonna help Jude with the ship. I'll be back in a few." The hedgehog produced a teal aura around his body. Then he levitated off his stool and flew out of the tavern.

"Wut the -!" shouted the bartender, dropping a plate of sandwiches on the table. "That tears it! I knew y'all wasn't townsfolk! The only 'Jude' I know who's got an airship is Judpheus! Yer members of the Tribulation Force, is wut ya are!"

Grace, Shen and Misrab looked at each other fearfully. The game was over; they were busted.

"And," the bartender continued, "I'm callin' the sheriff, right here, right now, to take care of the lotta ya!"

He picked up the phone on the counter and dialed the number. Grace, Shen and Misrab tried to escape, but the exit was blocked by a couple of thugs. In a small town like this, they wouldn't even have a chance to escape anyway. Maybe Silver, and maybe Jude, but they were doomed.

Jude was walking to the airship. Silver was hovering by his side, carrying the drum of oil with his psychokinesis. The drum glowed with the same aura around Silver's body as he carried it. When they reached the airship, Jude went to the back of the car and brought a hose over.

"Just stick this nozzle into the spout on the drum," said Jude, tossing the hose by Silver's feet. "Make sure it hits the bottom. I will turn on the vacuum. It will suck all the gasoline directly into the fuel tank. Then I will fix everything that was damaged in the engine."

Silver nodded and did so. In a matter of minutes, every last drop in the drum was drained into the fuel tank. He then walked over to where Jude was to see what he was fixing.

"Need any help?" he asked.

Jude shook his head. "I have all the help I need right here." He showed him the gauntlet he was wearing. It created a hologram of yellow light around itself in the shape of a welding torch. Jude put on a pair of dark goggles. "Look away. I'm about to seal this armour back together."

"Say, Jude," said Silver, averting his eyes, "what's that gauntlet around your arm?"

Jude looked at the gauntlet. "This is the Omni-Tool," he explained. "It can create any tool I need out of solid light. Or something like that." Jude looked at the golden gauntlets on Silver's wrists, the ones with the teal accents around them. "What about the gauntlets on your arms?" he asked. "What are they for?"

Silver's expression turned uncomfortable. "I probably shouldn't tell you. Revealing too much of the future can disrupt the timestream."

"As if you haven't done that already. Just tell me."

Silver took a deep breath. "Okay, I'll tell you: In the future, everybody becomes a slave laborer to the Jews. They divide the masses into different groups, working classes, according -"

Jude's communicator went off.

"Pastor Jude! Pastor Jude! It's an emergency! We've been captured!"

"Oh, no!" said Silver. "Quick, Jude! Use that recall-thingy to teleport them back to the ship!"

"I cannot," said Jude. "The teleporter is busted, along with the mother computer. There is still much to repair."

"Then I'll just have to save them myself!" said Silver.

Before the pastor could protest, Silver flew off into the distance to find the two.

 _Little Rock, Panamerica_

Robert Stennis was sitting in a recliner in his fancy new office, reading up on Charles Darwin's _On the Origin of Species_. One of his secretaries entered.

"Your Honor, we have great news!"

Stennis looked up from his book. "Excuse me? Have you already forgotten that I am no longer a judge?"

He cleared his throat. "Apologies… _Your Excellency_. We have discovered the location of your attempted murderer."

"Ah yes. Grace Wesley, the Christian woman. Where is she now?"

The secretary showed him a computer tablet with a map of Panamerica on it. There was a bright green dot in the region of Southern California. "She is in a small village in the Colorado desert. The local sheriff says she's in custody. They also have captured two other confirmed Christians, named Misrab Khan and Shen Zhizi."

"Well, what are we doing, waiting here?" asked Stennis. "Let's fly over there and make them pay!"

The secretary fixed his collar. "Well, Your Excellency, the locals are not very welcoming to non-locals. Going there alone could be dangerous."

"I'm not going alone," said Stennis. "I'm going to bring a whole armada. We'll not only get revenge on those filthy God-believers, and take over the village while we're at it, but we'll also track down the dreaded Judpheus's airship and blow it right out of the sky! Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!" He stopped laughing maniacally and glared at the secretary. "LAUGH," he demanded.

The secretary laughed with him: "Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!"

Later that evening, the secretary came to the office to get Stennis so they could fly to the village, but he wasn't there. Suddenly the floor of the office started to shake. Then roof of the office was literally torn right off the walls, and above was a giant robot. The robot's helmet opened off the neck armor like a hinge, and out popped Stennis, laughing.

"How do you like my giant robot battlesuit?" he cried. "Isn't it magnificent? I call it the Christian Creamer 5000! And check this out: -" He pressed a button, and the robot rocketed upward. There were turbojets in its feet that allowed it to hover in the air. "I'm going to fly all the way to that village in this robot! Those Christians won't stand a chance! Come on, armada, let's go!" The robot blasted off into the sky, and a whole armada of jet planes with him. The secretary looked up into the sky and cried, "But what about me?!"

 _Tokeyo, Laponia_

"Officer Mordecai," said the radio in Mordecai's plane. It was the commander of the armada.

" _Oy!_ What is it?" Mordecai replied.

"We've detected a powerful energy signature in the city. We don't know why, but we feel that it might be the location of our target. For some reason we're also detecting heavy seismic activity, which is quite odd for Tokyo."

"I'm sure it's nothing _earth-shattering_. Send me your coordinates. I'll be right there. Heh, that Christian scum won't know what hit 'im, huh?"

"Sure enough. Why don't you check in with your cohort to see if he's found that pastor goy yet?"

"I will. Over and out." Mordecai depressed the button on his radio. "Officer Reuben. Have you found, eh, what's his name… Daniel?"

" _David_. Eh, we've combed through the city, and he's nowheres to be found. But he could still be somewheres in the outskirts, like in Dusty Desert or White Acropolis."

"Doubt it," replied Mordecai. "Those places are desolate. There's no reason he would want to go there. I would try Wave Ocean or Soleanna Forest."

"Understood. Over and out."

Through the cockpit windshield Mordecai saw two lights over the city, bright as the sun. What were they? Coming in closer, one of them sort of looked like…

Meanwhile, the whole city was shaking beneath Super Akihito and Super Triggered Josh. A huge crack was starting to open up in the streets. Smoke was pouring out of it fast. Suddenly, lava started shooting out the crack and into the sky like a leak in the plumbing. The building were showered in hot rocks.

"What's going on?!" shouted Super Triggered Josh.

Super Akihito laughed. "Exactly what I said I did! Do you not know? This country lies right on a major tectonic fault line! The whole country is going to explode!"

Super Triggered Josh flew toward him and started swinging at him. "You maniac! Don't you realize you've doomed yourself, too?!"

Super Akihito, dodging his punches, replied, "Yes, I suppose so. But sacrifices must be made in name of Science!"  
"You know what? I don't even care if we're all gonna die now!" he yelled. "All I care about now is destroying _you!_ "

Super Akihito brushed some pretend dust off his nose. "My sentiments exactly! Now fight me, and perish!"

Suddenly, Josh saw the armada flying in towards him. "Target has been located! Everyone, fire at will!" shouted the commander. The jets all started blasting him, but Josh put up a forcefield around his body as the jets whizzed past him.

"Haha!" said Super Akihito, crossing his arms. "And once again I say, haha! It seems you are outnumbered now!" He flew straight into the forcefield like Superman, so fast he managed to break it. Super Triggered Josh plummeted to the crumbling city below. Then, Super Akihito he drew his hands to his side, cupped together. He created an energy ball in his hands and thrusted it forward, saying " _Ka-me-ha-me-HA!"_ But at the same moment, Super Triggered Josh did the same, sending his own beam of Social Justice energy. The two beams collided, creating a massive energy clash. They fought violently to consume one another.

"Dumb question," said Mordecai, turning his plane around to get another shot at Super Triggered Josh. "Why does the city appear to be on fire?"

"Officer!" shouted a voice on the radio. "We've just received word the Seismic Research Institute! An apparently artificial crack in the earth's crust has reached all the way to the Laponia Median Tectonic Line! This, in addition to a superdeep vortex borne all the way from the surface to the planet's mantel, has created a supervolcanic eruption across the district!"

"In English please?" said Mordecai, rolling his eyes. "Or preferably Yiddish."

"The island is going to explode!"

Mordecai's olive skin went white. " _Oy vey!_ We gotta get outta here! We don't need to destroy the kid. That volcano-whatchamacallit will take care of him. Let's go find the pastor."

The armada flew off away from the burning city. The two super saiyans continued to blast each other in the midst of the chaos.

 _Tihar Prison Complex, Indo-Pacifica_

"You really put up a fight, Ms. Khan," said Chal. "You have nearly eaten half of the ham. Now think. Is it really worth all this trouble? Is it really worth eating an entire ham just to preserve your pathetic friends' secrets?"

Ayisha's stomach was bloated from all the ham. Her mouth was covered in liquid fat. She groaned, "M-my friends aren't pathetic. Y-you can't say that about them…"

"Maybe they are not. But they probably are. Now, we have all this delicious pork left. You do not want it to go to waste, do you?"

Ayisha cried, "Oh, please, no more. I'm so full…"

Chal cut another slice of ham. "I do not care if your stomach is about to explode!" he shouted. "You will expose Judpheus and the Tribulation Force, or you will finish this ham! And when you are done with it, you will be provided with a _lovely_ second course!"

Ayisha's bleary eyes widened. "S-second course?"

Chal brought up another covered platter. He took off the metal cover. Just when Ayisha thought it couldn't get any worse, she saw it: An arrangement of steamed shellfish. There was a fat, meaty lobster in the middle, surrounded by clams, mussels, and shrimp.

"No!" she cried. "Feed me the rest of the ham if you want, but please! Not the seafood!"

"Do not worry, Ms. Khan," replied Chal. "You will crack long before then."

Chal stuffed the moist pink pig meat into Ayisha's pretty little mouth.

 _Kingdom Valley, Eurasia_

David, Martin, Mina and Amy were hiking through Soleanna Forest when they started to see stone buildings in the distance. "Over there!" exclaimed Mina. "Those must be the castle ruins!"

The four of them found a perfectly circular clearing in the forest. There were great stone walls around the clearing, partially crumbled, with what looked like an arch-shaped door frame in it. When they looked through the door frame, they found that the clearing was on top of a huge cliff. Or was it? No, the clearing was actually the ruins of an old tower that had long since been overgrown by grass, trees and flowers.

There was a stone pier on the other side of the door. They walked onto it and looked over the edge. There was a huge moat several hundred feet down. "Alright, guys, let's try _not_ to fall off here," said David.

"Agreed," Amy replied.

The mossy bridge sloped down into a cave in a huge mountain. There was an opening on the other side of the cave where the bridge leveled out. They ran towards the opening. It was there they could see the end of the pier. The rest of it had apparently crumbled into the moat. However, just before it was cut off, there was an uncannily conveniently place hovercraft.

"There is only one seat," said David. "That means only one of us can go to the castle. I'll have to find it myself."

"But what about us?" asked Martin.

"You all can wait at the end of this bridge," David replied. "I mean, how hard could finding a sacred royal artifact in a castle this size possibly be?" He hopped onto the hovercraft and turned on the engine. The vehicle started to float. He drove it over the edge of the bridge. Luckily, at this point, the bridge was only a couple of yards over the surface of the water. He glided over the water until he reached a literal brick wall. It was the foundation of the castle's entrance. He pressed down on a pedal, which caused the vehicle to float upward until he reached the top of the wall.

He found himself in the front yard of the palace. It had not been mowed in ages. There was tall grass and flowers. And the cobblestone path leading to the entrance was quite mossy as well.

Something caught David's eye. There was what looked like a black light radiating from next to a tree. He cautiously approached it. Right there, sitting next to the tree, was a purple and white scepter. He picked it up. It was a bit heavier than it looked. _What were the odds,_ David thought. _The Scepter has been just lying out here in the open for more than two decades._ There was a clear imprint in the soil from where the Scepter had been lying. Had the Duke just left it here over twenty years ago and just forgot to get it back? He couldn't know for sure. All David knew that this was clearly a scepter, and it clearly had a darkness radiating from it. He brought it onto the hovercraft and drove back. But when he got to the bridge, he saw Martin, Mina and Amy surrounded by a circle of soldiers.

"What the -?"

"Freeze! Drop the Scepter!" shouted a familiar-sounding voice. Standing right there over him, at the edge of the bridge, was none other than Officer Reuben, pointing his disintegrator pistol right at him. David hit the brake on the hovercraft. "Heh. Long time no see, Reverend David Hill."

"Long time no see, Officer Reuben," David replied. "Where's your partner, uhh… what is it… Officer Morty?"

Reuben scowled. "Officer _Mordecai_ is dealing with your friend Josh in Tokyo."

"You mean he's alive?!" cried David excitedly. "Praise God!"

"Not for long," said another familiar voice. David looked behind Reuben. It was Officer Mordecai, walking up behind him.

"Mordecai!" exclaimed Reuben. "Where's the kid?"

"If he's not dead now," Mordecai replied, "he will be soon. Tokyo is burning to the ground, and the whole island is about to explode under geothermal pressure. Unfortunately, this could also be the demise of Emperor Akihito as well. The two were fighting tooth and nail when I got there."

Reuben paused. "Wait a minute," he said, quietly. "So you're telling me, you left Josh - one of the most wanted criminals in the entire world - _alive_ in literally the largest city. And you left Akihito - our glorious king, and the man who caused the whole population of Japan to turn to atheism - to die in a city that is _literally_ about to explode."

Mordecai looked down. "Well, it doesn't sound very good when you put it _that_ way, but… yeah."

Reuben grabbed him by the shoulders and violently shook him. "What sort of games are you playing with me?!" he screamed. "Are you trying to cause the collapse of the New World Order? You imbecile!"

They were distracted now. It was David's chance to make a run for it. He flew the hovercraft up to the bridge and pressed down on two buttons on the yoke. Bullets started shooting out of two barrels on the front of the hovercraft. "Take this!" he shouted.

The guards all took cover on the ground. Martin, Mina and Amy did the same. David rushed up to them. "Get up, now!" he shouted. "Follow me!"

The three of them got to their feet and ran. David saw a bunch of fighter jets that the soldiers had used to find them. "Get on, quick!"

Most of the jets had only one seat. But there were a couple of F-15s, which had two. David hopped inside one with Martin, and Mina hopped in another with Amy.

"Can you pilot this thing?" Mina asked Amy.

"Sure I can!" Amy replied. "My fiance was rich!"

Amy and David started driving them all down the bridge like a runway. Just before reaching the mass of bodies on at the edge, they lifted off.

Mordecai and Reuben stood up. "They stole two of our F-15s!" shouted Reuben.

"They wouldn't have gotten away if you hadn't grabbed me!" Mordecai yelled at him.

Reuben turned to Mordecai. "Yeah, well, I wouldn't have grabbed you if you had just done your job right!"

"Get out of my face, jewbagel!"

"Oh yeah? Well, you're a matzah-muncher!"

"Kike!"

"Yiddiot!"

"Penny-pinching nickel-nose!"

"Gentile!"

Mordecai stepped back. "Y-you… You don't mean that, do you?" A tear started rolling down his cheek.

"I meant what I said!" Reuben shouted. "If you can't do your job well enough to even save the king, or at least kill your enemy, your no better than a white! Furthermore -" He poked his index finger in his chest. "If you hadn't been so incompetent, the warden would still be with us today!"

"Me?!" Mordecai cried, his voice shaking. "I was actually making an effort to stop him from choking! You were the one who was taking forever with the bucket!"

"I could have done the Heimlich better than you! And I don't even know it!"

"I can't believe this," said Mordecai. "We've been partners for years, and I've always been there to help. But if you really think I'm no better than a white…" He started to walk away. "...then this partnership is over." He started to run away sobbing.

Reuben started to feel a little bit bad about what he said. He didn't really mean it. Should he apologize? No. That would be a sign of weakness. He started ordering the soldiers. "Get up. Let's track down these guys before they get too far away."

 _Wild Ridge, Southern California_

The sheriff kicked in the swinging doors. "I heard there was somethin' in this here town that didn't quite belong," he said in the most pronounced western accent Grace, Shen and Misrab had heard all day. All three gasped as they spun their heads toward the door. But they didn't see anybody.

"Uh, who said that?" Grace asked.

"Down here."

They looked down under the door. In the doorway was a tiny man, even shorter than Silver, wearing super-tight skinny jeans and cowboy boots. He also had a cowboy hat that was about the size of his whole body. But his most notable feature was his huge, red eyebrows and mustache.

"They call me Sheriff Sam," the man said. "Yer both comin' with me."

They started snickering. He was so short, but his voice was so gruff. He grabbed them by the shirt collars and pressed his bulbous nose to theirs.

"What're y'all laughin' at?" he shouted.

"Go with you?!" Misrab laughed. "I have seen rats more intimidating than you!"

"Listen, towel-head," said Sheriff Sam, "You don't seem ta know just who yer messin' with." He looked up at the bartender. "Frank! On the keyboard!"

The bartender went over to the honkey-tonk piano and started playing a piece. Sheriff Sam cleared his throat and told them who he was - in song.

" _Oh I'm the toughest hambre that ever lived out west,_

 _Although I'm only two feet tall, mah shootin' is the best,_

 _I like to hunt fer big old blimps way up in the sky_

 _I like to see if I can hit a blimp that's on the fly!_

" _I'll hunt down God, I'll blast away, I'll shoot where'er I can!_

 _I lay mah gun, I nev'r miss, or my name ain't -_

 _Sheriff-Deputy Sam!_

" _Sometimes I reach a Christian without a single sound,_

 _And then I pull the trigger and the Christian hits the ground!_

 _Muslims, too, are very cute, as they try to flee_

 _But with my trusty rifle, they can't escape from me!_

" _I'll hunt down Christianity, I'll shoot where'er I can!_

 _I lay mah gun, I nev'r miss, or my name ain't -_

 _Sheriff-Deputy Sam!_

" _I sometimes hunt fer Hindus when there's nothin' else to shoot,_

 _I aim at the indigenous, I don't much give a hoot!_

 _I'll even shoot the Judaists who run so very fast (oy vey!),_

 _No matter how they run away, they can't escape mah blast!_

" _I'll hunt the Tribulation Force, I'll shoot where'er I can!_

 _I lay mah gun, I nev'r miss, or my name ain't -_

 _Sheriff-Deputy Sam!_

" _But I must really tell you - I know you will be glad -_

 _That though I shoot religious folk, I'm not so very bad!_

 _For from my little rifle, an atheist never drop_

 _Because I know that if I do, the Jews blow their tops!_

" _I'll hunt down all theism, I'll shoot where'er I can!_

 _I lay mah gun, I nev'r miss, or my name ain't -_

 _Sheriff-Deputy Sam!"_

The bartender did a finishing chord. Sheriff Sam pulled out a handgun and pointed it at the three. "Ya git the picture?" he said.

Grace, Shen and Misrab gulped and nodded nervously.

"Good! Now stand up with yer hands in the air!" They did so. Sam stood behind them with the gun to their backs. "March, dagnabbit! March!"

Misrab looked behind his shoulder. "Actually, it's April."

 _BANG!_ Sam fired a bullet right above his head. The sound made Misrab's ears hurt. He put his hands over them.

"Hands up!" shouted Sam. "An' smart talk me again, I'll blow yer smelly brown head off!"

Sam made them march out of the tavern and to the sheriff's office. The sheriffs office was right next door to the tavern. It was just an old shack with a big sign above the porch onning that said "SHERIFF". The wooden door had a window with iron bars in it.

"Open that door!" Sam demanded. Misrab opened it, his hand shaking.

Sam shut the door behind them as they walked in and locked it. Then he threw them into the holding cell at the other side of the room and locked them in.

"Heh. Y'all know the price you two got on yer heads? Once I sell the two a' yas to the federal government, I'll be livin' like an aristocrat!" He walked to his desk, guffawing. He picked up a phone book and started looking through it. "Now, wut's the number fer the FBI?... or is it the CIA? Ah, neither. I'll call His Majesty hisself! Let's see. Do… Don… Done…" He looked over to the cell. "Is it Don-eld? Or Don-uld Trump?"

Grace said, "Actually, I think it's Don- _ald_. With an 'A'."

"But I think you're supposed to look for the last name first," said Misrab.

"Quiet, you two, I can't think with all yer yammerin'!"

Grace and Misrab rolled their eyes and sat on the bench in the cell. Shen whispered "See? I keep quiet when I am supposed to. I suggest you two do the same."

The wind Silver was creating caused waves of sand to fly out from underneath him. He was flying about ninety miles an hour. He had to get to the sheriff's office fast. The office at the dead end of the road, right next to the tavern. But just when he was a few hundred feet away from the office, a giant destructive robot fell from the sky, right down in front of him. Silver saw the short bearded sheriff run out of the office. "Wut in tarnation?!" the man shouted.

The mech bent over and picked him up by the blue scarf he was wearing, with two fingers. Then the head opened up, revealing Robert Stennis in the cockpit.

"Where are they?" he demanded.

"I don't know who ya are," said Sam, "but I'm the sheriff a' this here town! I ain't gotta tell ya nuthin'!"

Stennis rubbed his chin. "Then I don't suppose you'd mind if I dropped you?"

Sam looked down. He was hanging from about four or five meters high. Which was an especially long distance, given his size.

"Gah! No! Please! Th-they're in mah office! In the cell!"

"There. Now was that so hard?" said Stennis, smiling. The head closed back up. The robot carefully set Sam back on the ground. Then it tore the roof right off the shack, threw it away, and gazed inside. Grace, Shen and Misrab were cowering in the corner of the cell. "Target sighted!" Stennis said, as the robot reached in to pluck them out. But just as it went to grab them, it was stunned. Stennis was perplexed. "What? The battery can't be dead! I just had it charged!" Then he noticed a teal aura around the armor.

"This'll stop you!" said Silver. He had his hands raised in the air, with psychic energy coming out of them. "My psychic powers can stun mechs!"

Silver used his powers to throw the robot down on it's back. While Stennis struggled to get the bot back on it's feet, Silver ran inside and used his powers to bend the iron bars of the cell open. "Hurry!" he shouted. "We gotta go!" Silver surrounded the three with his psychic energy. The three of them flew back to the airship.

Jude was standing inside the car, fixing the teleporter. "Finally, it's all fixed!" he said. "Time to test it out!" He pressed a few buttons so that the teleporter would only target the three he wanted back. Just as Silver, Misrab, Shen and Grace ran inside the ship, he pressed the recall button. The four were immediately teleported in front of Jude.

"Great, you are here!" said Jude. "Good thing I fixed that teleporter, yes?"

Silver rolled his eyes. "Yeah. I can't imagine what would have happened if you hadn't."

"There's somebody after us!" said Grace. "Somebody inside a giant robot or something! We have to go!"

Jude launched the ship and started to fly it away. The robot ran over to where it had launched from. "Oh, no you don't!" shouted Stennis. "Everybody, after that airship!" The whole armada of jets started flying after them.

Jude saw the jets behind the ship. "We need more speed! Activating Battle Mode!" He pulled the big handle on the control panel. The air envelope was compressed and the blimp turned into a super-fast spaceship with lasers. Now the plane bullets couldn't harm them. "Hold on, my friends!" said Jude. The ship blasted away over the desert horizon.

"Yes! At this rate, we'll reach Josh by morning!" said Jude. He looked ahead of him. The sun was setting in the exact direction he was flying in.

Grace looked out the windshield. "Isn't it beautiful?" she said. "I've never seen a desert sunset."

Jude nodded. "You must remember this next time you are debating an atheist," said Jude. "If there were no God, why would a sunset be made so beautiful?"

Misrab yawned. "Well, I have had enough excitement as I can stand today. I am going to sleep through this ride.

"Yeah, me too," agreed Silver. "See you guys in the morning."  
"Likewise," said Shen. "Sweet dreams."

Grace took Jude by the hand. "Pastor, please pray with me."

"What?"

"Pray that Josh is okay."

The two of them held hands and prayed for the wellbeing of Josh.

 _Twelve hours later. The time is around 6 am in Tokyo, Laponia._

"Approaching destination," said the computer voice. The ship started to slow down to a gentle drift across the sky.

Jude, who had been sitting in a seat in front of the control panel, opened bleary eyes and looked out the windshield. He was nearly blinded by the light pouring in. It looked like there were two suns. Furthermore, the whole city was on fire. There was hot lava gushing out a huge crack in the ground like a fountain.

 _What happened to this place?_ thought Jude. As the ship closed in on the city, he saw that the second sun in the sky was not really a sun: it was two flying men. The closer the ship came, the louder the sound was.

Jude put on his sunglasses and looked at the light surrounding the two men. His jaw dropped. "It's Josh!" He ran to the cabin where the Force members slept. But, when he opened the door, he realized he had forgotten to buy sheet metal to fix it. All there was beyond the door was open sky.

 _Darn it,_ Jude thought. _Still need to get that fixed_.

"We're over here, Jude," said Grace, from the map room. She and the other three stood up and walked over to Jude. Rubbing her eyes, she yawned. "What's up?"

"Josh has engaged Emperor Akihito!" said Jude, pointing out the windshield. "We must save him before he is blown to smithereens!"

"I managed to save Grace and Shen and Misrab," said Silver, "Let me save Josh!"

"No, Silver, it is too risky! These are super saiyans or something!"

But Silver ignored him. He jumped out the door of the airship without a parachute.

Over the last twelve hours, Super Akihito and Super Triggered Josh had grown much closer - literally. They were mere yards away now, still blasting each other and trying to consume one another.

"This has been going on all night!" said Super Triggered Josh yelled. "Surrender, for the triumph of Social Justice!"

"Ha! All night is nothing!" replied Super Akihito. "I can keep this up all day! Surrender, for triumph of atheism!"

"Enough!"

Suddenly, Super Akihito and Super Triggered Josh were stunned and surrounded by teal light, and their energy blasts stopped. They looked up to see the silver hedgehog, hovering in the sky near them.

"Nice trick, kid," Josh said. "But I'm invulnerable to your attacks!" He threw an energy ball at Silver. Silver, with an _oof_ , fell down onto the roof of the skyscraper below them.

"I don't care if the lava consumes us!" shouted Super Triggered Josh. "I will destroy you, you bigot!"

Silver, bruised and sore from the fall (and burnt badly from the energy ball), looked up at Josh. "Wait," he said, coughing up some blood, "what do you mean, 'bigot'?"

He looked down at Silver. "He's a bigot!" he shouted. "He's racist, sexist, misogynist, Christianophobic, achondroplasiaphobic -"

"No, Josh!" said Silver, getting back up of his feet. "You're missing the point! We didn't send you on this mission for this reason!"

Super Triggered Josh held an irate, yet slightly perplexed expression. "What do you mean?"

"I mean * _cough*_ you've become mad with your social justice powers! Exploiting them just to win some petty argument or make an unnecessary point will just harm the cause of the people who _really_ need them!"

Super Triggered Josh's expression sank. "You mean…?"

"You don't need to abuse this kind of power, Josh," said Silver. "It's one thing to want freedom from oppression. Trust me; I wanted that so bad I decided to go back in time to get it. But I didn't become a Social Justice Warrior over it! Why? Because becoming a master of tongue-fu doesn't make you a better person. It makes you no less of a 'bigot' than the person who was oppressing you in the first place!"

Slightly-Less Triggered Josh started to descend. His hair was slowly returning to it's original color.

"Please, Josh," said Silver, approaching Josh. "Remember what we're fighting for. You may be a Social Justice Warrior, but you're a Christian first. A Christian who wants freedom to worship your God in your own way. Maybe destroying the kings _wasn't_ the way to achieve freedom. Maybe all you had to do…" Silver wrapped his furry arms around Josh's waist. "...was hug it out."

Josh, now Not-Triggered-At-All Josh, kneeled down to Silver's level and put his chin on his shoulder. He started to weep. It was at that moment Silver noticed Super Akihito had been staring at them from the sky the whole time.

"Dear Science," said Super Akihito. He descended to the roof where they were on and his Super state powered down. "All this time… I thought theism was worst thing that ever happened to world. I joined Illuminati so I could rid the world of theists. Make paradise for atheist Jews. But now I realize…" His head sank. "...I am no better than theist. And now I am going to die in this city."

"You can still fix this," said Silver. "You can just agree to disagree. And then, if the two of you work together, you can save the people in the city!"

Akihito walked up to Josh and put his hand on his shoulder. "Josh. I am sorry I tried to kill you. Three times. I am atheist, you are Christian. We can just agree to disagree about what we believe meaning of life is. We do not need to fight and call each other names. Will you forgive me?"

Josh looked at Akihito and wiped his tears away. "Come here, old man." The two of them hugged for just long enough for it to become awkward. "Now, uh, what can we do about _that?_ " Josh was pointing at the fountain of lava and the collapsing buildings.

"Do not worry about it," said Akihito. "I told my royal advisor to evacuate population before this even happened. They are all fine."

"But where will they all live?"

"Eh, they can figure it out themselves."

Silver pointed up at the airship. "Do you want to come with us? You don't need to burn here with this city. And we could use a helping hand in defeating the Jews."

"It would be my honor to join your resistance group," said Akihito, bowing. "But I believe I can do far more good from here. Carry me to the city of Kyoto. It has been designated to be backup capital of Laponia. And it is far away from fault line, so it will not be engulfed in flames like Tokyo. As the Emperor, I have power to make executive decisions. I can make theism, even Christianity, legal in this district."

"Well then, let's go!" said Silver. He picked them up with his psychokinesis and carried them into the airship.

"Josh! You're alive!" cried Jude. Misrab and Grace came to Josh with Jude for a group hug. Shen didn't really know Josh, but he joined in on the group hug anyway. Then they saw the Emperor standing at the door. "Aah! It's Emperor Akihito!" shouted Jude. "Everybody, draw your weapons!" Jude, Grace and Misrab all took out handguns and pointed them at Akihito (Shen didn't have a gun). But Josh and Silver ran in front of him. "No!" said Josh. "This man's on our side now. We've learned that it's sometimes better to try reasoning with a person before resorting to violence."

Akhito nodded. "And I have learned that just because your government has institutionalized religion does not mean you have to force it on whole population."

"I think the moral was a bit more broad than that, but… sure, I guess," Josh said.

They put their guns down. "Alright," said Jude. "So he's with us now?"

"Better," Silver replied. "He's going to legalize theism in Laponia! We need to take him to the new capital of this district; in Kyoto."

Jude quickly punched the coordinates of the city into the computer. Then the ship sped away into the distance.

Meanwhile, Stennis, who was leading the armada in his giant flying robot, had just reached Tokyo. Stennis gaped in horror at the sight of the city. There was not a human in sight. The buildings were all burning, and there was a fountain of lava still spurting from the middle of the city.

"Science damn," he said, "what in Science's name have those Christians done to this place?"

"Mission failed," replied the commander of the armada through the radio. "We'll get 'em next time."

"They will pay for this," Stennis shouted. "Science be my witness, THEY WILL PAY!"

 _It is 10:00 in Tihar Prison Complex, Indo-Pacifica_

Ayisha was shuddering in her cell. She had passed out the night before from both the physical and mental pain of eating an entire dead pig. She vaguely remembered getting her stomach pumped by the paramedics and being thrown back into her cell for the night. But now it was almost time for breakfast. And she knew exactly what she would be getting: another generous portion of torture.

She heard footsteps. Before she knew it, Chal was standing before the prison door. "Good morning, Ms. Khan," he said, in his Indian accent. "Sleep well last night?"

Ayisha shook her head. Chal opened the door.

"I want to apologize for what happened last night. It should have been clear to me that my methods were… inefficient."

"Do not try to play good cop with me," snapped Ayisha. "Whatever you are trying to do, it won't work!"

"Ms. Khan, please," said Chal. "All I want is some information. It should not have taken you eating an entire ham to get to where we are now. Why can you not just put the past behind us?"

"It is not about the past," said Ayisha. "Your intentions have not changed. You want my Christian brothers and sisters dead, or better yet, captured. And I will not let you do that!"

"You see, that right there is the kind of attitude that puts us back in the interrogation room."

"So take me there! Nothing in there is more horrific than the thought of you detaining my friends!"

Chal rubbed his chin. "Then unclean food clearly is not enough," he said. "I need something even _worse_. Something not only offensive to _you_ , but the entire Middle Eastern culture. Something like…" He produced a Nickelback CD. "...western music."

It took about ten seconds for Ayisha to process what she just heard. "No," she said. "No, you cannot do that." She was tearing up now. "You cannot do that! It is impossible!"

"Listen to you," Chal said, laughing. "One moment you were so sure that you would not submit no matter what. Now you being subjected to something so unfathomably painful that you try to convince yourself that I am not even capable of subjecting yourself to said thing. You will tell me everything. That is a promise."

 _It is 4:30 AM in New City, Soleanna, Eurasia_

David and Amy landed the jets on the runway of the New City Airport. It was still quite dark out. They ran all the way to Soleanna Castle Town.

Huffing and puffing, David made his way to the front door. Martin, Mina and Amy stayed behind to keep watch for the men who were after them.

The two guards were standing in front of the door. "You again!" one said. He noticed the Scepter in David's hand. "Ah. The Scepter. Her Highness told me all about that. I'll have her buzz you in." He pressed a button below a speaker, next to the door. "Your Highness," he said, "this man has brought the Scepter. Shall I let him in?" No answer. "I think she is asleep."

"Well, we can't just wait until morning!" said David. "We need to get her to Panem now!"

"Sheesh, you act as if you're being chased by the police!" said the other guard. "Give us a minute, we'll get her." The two disappeared through the castle doors.

David looked up at the early morning sky. The moon had almost reached its last quarter. It was strange to think that he had been imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay just seven days ago. And even now, having escaped from prison, he still would not be able to preach to his church. For he knew, Hope Springs Pentecostal Church had been replaced with Hope Springs Church of the Atheists. If they could change the name of the church, they might as well have changed the name of the whole town. Hope Springs was not a place of 'hope'. It had become a pagan wasteland where God was dead. And thanks to Robert Stennis, all the other gods that had taken His place were dying too. Could Soleanna kill their god? It wouldn't bother David if they did. David didn't believe in sun-worship. But just the fact that they were destroying the culture of a country that had been around for centuries was just disappointing to think about.

About five minutes later, they brought the Princess out. Her hair was messy and she was wearing soft, orange pajamas.

"Sorry we had to leave on such short notice," David apologized.

Elise yawned. "That's fine. As long as I can sleep on the ride."

They realized a problem when they got back to the F-15s: There were only two seats in each. With Elise with them, they needed five.

Elise sat in Mina's lap in the back seat. Mina didn't know how she was going to tolerate this for the next thirteen hours. It would all be worth it in the end.

"Ready for takeoff," said David, in the pilot's seat of his plane. "Let's get out of here!"

The two jets took off into the night sky.

 _It is 1:30 PM in Kyoto, Laponia_

Emperor Akihito was standing at a podium with a microphone in front of the city hall. Jude, Grace, Misrab, Silver and Josh stood behind him on the platform to witness the event. Before them was a sea of Social Justice Warriors, still protesting, their picket signs in hand. They said things like "GOD IS EQUALITY" and "ATHEIST PRIVILEGE" and "DEATH TO ALL FASCISTS". Josh couldn't know for sure, but he guaranteed Tomomi, Dosei, Shiroi, Atsui, Ren, and MangaGirl2500 were among them. He wished he could see them now.

"I sure am glad Akihito was able to get a speech ready to deliver to his people on the same day we brought him here," said Grace. "How do you think he memorized it all in such a short time?"

"He is Japanese," said Misrab. "All those people are smart."

Jude hushed them. "He's about to start!"

"My fellow Japs," he began, "I suppose you are wondering what has become of Tokyo. Well, it is long story. I had little disagreement with my friend Josh over here -" Josh smiled waved to the audience.

"To make long story short, let us just say fight got too wild, and I, ah, er, _we_ destroyed your city. Both. Fifty-fifty." Josh coughed.

"Anyway, fight made me learn something very important. And that thing is: Disagreement no equal hate." There were some confused murmurs in the audience.

"What do I mean by this? Well, let me explain: History is story of humans fighting and killing each other over differences in opinions. I, as well as other nine world leaders, believed we could end this by making everybody think same. We joined Illuminati. We shaped public opinion in media; in textbooks, television, internet. We made everybody into atheists and brainwashed them to hate all who disagree with them, just as great Richard Dawkins intended." There were some hoots and claps in the audience.

"But this solved nothing!" he shouted. "In attempt to eliminate hatred, we made it stronger than ever. Sure, Christians were intolerant of others. No like other religions. No like LGBT people. No like evolution. But they also no like putting people who did not agree with them in prison! And this young man - this young hero - was first of them to fight back. Our fight no end with victor. It ended with us. Hugging out our differences. And I think it is time for this district to do same. From this day forward, Christianity, and all other forms of theism, are legal!"

The SJWs roared and threw hats up in the air. Akihito did a backflip into them and crowd surfed all the way to Kyoto Imperial Palace.

Josh turned to Jude. "I forgot to ask: What about the rest of the kings? Are they dead? Or at least neutralized?"

"My target is," Jude replied.

"Mine as well," added Silver.

"I failed," Mina said, disappointedly.

"And I never even got to mine!" said Misrab. "Why haven't we gone to Midesta yet? I would sure like to go _Arab_ on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Even without blowing myself up."

"No, Misrab," said Jude. "We need to go to Indo-Pacifica to rescue your daughter. She could be in danger!"

"I am sure she is fine."

 _Tihar Prison Complex, Indo-Pacifica_

Ayisha was absolutely not fine. In desperation, she screamed as loud as she could in an attempt to drown out the ear-splitting sound of Chad Kroeger singing to a country track. Chal took the headphones off Ayisha. She stopped screaming and started panting heavily.

"It is no use," he said. "These headphones are noise-cancelling. No matter how loud you scream, you will here nothing but pain."

"Please," moaned Ayisha, "this is unbearable. If I hear another song I think my ears will begin to leak blood."

Chal skipped ahead a few minutes on the CD player. "Here is a song I know you know. Everybody knows this one."

 _Oh, God, no._ Ayisha was sure of what was about to come. She had heard this song before on the radio when she was little. It was so bad her father had to clean her ears out with cotton swab afterward.

On went the headphones:

" _Look at this photograph_

 _Every time I do it makes me laugh_

 _How did our eyes get so red?_

 _And what the hell is on Joey's head?_

 _And this is where I grew up_

 _I think the present owner fixed it up_

 _I never knew we ever went without_

 _The second floor is hard for sneaking out_

 _And this is where I went to school_

 _Most of the time had better things to do_

 _Criminal record says I broke in twice_

 _I must have done it half a dozen times_

 _I wonder if it's too late_

 _Should I go back and try to graduate?_

 _Life's better now than it was back then_

 _If I was them I wouldn't let me in…"_

Ayisha screamed until her throat was sore. This was simply unbearable. In her head, she apologized to God and prayed that nothing she did now could do harm to her friends. Then she cried out,

"Okay, okay! I'll tell you everything! Just make it stop!"

Chal grinned and turned off the player. "I knew you would," he said. "Now, about the resistance..."

"Yes, of course!" said Ayisha. "The Tribulation Force. Jude sent me on a mission a few days ago to assassinate the king of this district. He sent all the other members on their own missions as well. As far as I know, I am the only one who has failed my mission."

"Well," said Chal, "According to the news, only three of our ten world leaders have passed away in the last week. And one has been replaced."

"Wait, what?" Ayisha gasped. "Have those districts fallen into anarchy, or…?"

"I will be asking the questions here," he cut her off. "Where is your base of operations?"

"I believe it has been destroyed. My father crashed it into -"

"Lies!" shouted Chal. "Intelligence has confirmed that the airship is fully operational! Now where is it? Tell me or I'll play Jacob Sartorius in your ears at full volume!"

"I do not know! All I know is what my father has told me!"

Chal turned around and produced a small device. He pressed a button on it, and a hologram was projected out of it, showing 3D models of all of the Tribulation Force members. "We have identified every member in the resistance," he said. "We know everything about every person, down to the finest detail. Except one." He pressed another button, and a 2D image was projected. It showed Emperor Akihito, giving a speech before a huge crowd. Standing behind him, she could clearly see Jude, Josh, Misrab, Grace, and Silver. He started pointing at them one by one.

"This picture was taken at 1:32 PM Laponia Standard Time. It depicts Emperor Akihito turning traitor against the United Atheist League, by legalizing theism in his district. Jude, age 47, leader of the resistance. Misrab, age 43, member. Grace Wesley, age 41, member. Josh Wheaton, age 21, member. Shen Zhizi, also 21, newest member. And then there is _this_." He pointed at Silver the Hedgehog. "This creature was reported to have broken into the Federal Legislative Palace a few days ago. The legislators believed him to be one of the gods - er, I mean -"

"Wait," Ayisha said. "'One of the gods'? I thought you were atheists!"

Chal was turning red. "Of course we are atheists!" he yelled. "I meant, ah, archons. The divine leaders of the world."

"Gods."

"No! They do not believe in -"

"Jude was right all along," said Ayisha. "The kings of the UAL are not really atheists. They are Luciferians! The archons are the fallen angels, aren't they? They give their power to the kings so they can rule the world!"

"That is crazy talk!" Chal screamed. "Your just a tin-foil conspiracy theory nutjob!"

"Then who are they? Who are these 'archons' that the kings worship?"

Chal sighed. "You are already dead anyway. I guess I could give you the satisfaction of knowing before I end you.

"For millennia, men have built and erected stone statues to worship as gods. Every statue has some sort of principality associated with it. When men bow down to these statues, the principalities are pleased very much, and in turn grant them spiritual powers. These powers can be used to learn the secrets of the universe and use them to assume power over humanity. And then these secrets can be shared with a select few people in mystery schools. You may know them as… the 'Illuminati'.

"Egypt, the first kingdom, worked in this way. The Pharaohs attended mystery schools to learn how to predict celestial events. By doing this, they managed to convince their people they were divinity. For if one among the people were able to predict a total solar eclipse, he could just as easily convince the people he were able to blot out the sun with a single thought.

"Worshipping demons was an efficient way of keeping a select few in power for thousands of years. But God had always been the antithesis to this. He was the only deity worthy of worship. And we all knew he could wipe out all His enemies with a single thought. And in the first century AD, God came back into power. The new religion, Christianity, replaced paganism with Jesus, who had warned his people about the Illuminati New World Order agenda. In turn, Christianity destroyed the sixth kingdom, the Roman Empire, bringing in the Dark Ages.

"It was at the end of the Dark Ages that the Illuminati found a solution to Christianity: Instead of trying to win people over to Satan, just convince them that Christianity simply is not true, and that Jesus was not really the Messiah. It took centuries, but they eventually convinced the whole world there was no God, no Satan, and no angels. But the Illuminati knew the truth. They continued to worship the devils, continually growing stronger as the masses became dumber, with their half-baked philosophies like the 'big bang' and 'evolution'. Their ultimate goal is to defeat Jesus in the Battle of Armageddon, after which they will ascend into heaven and rule the universe for all eternity.

"That is what the kings _really_ believe. They only _say_ there is no God to dumb down the masses."

"I knew it," replied Ayisha.

"Ahem. As I was saying -" he pointed back to Silver's picture. "We do not know anything about this creature, other than he fooled the National Assembly of District 6 into executing their king, Nicolás Maduro. What can you tell me about it?"

"That 'creature' is Silver the Hedgehog. You probably have no information about him because he was never born. He is from the future."

Chal was quickly intrigued. "The future you say?" he said, lowering his hand. "Tell me more. What has he to say about the future?"

Ayisha thought a minute. "Not much," she said. "He did not tell us much. Probably to keep from messing up the time stream, or something. Here is what I know: The Antichrist and the False Prophet come and rule over the UAL for thirteen years. Then there's a huge war that lasts like, twenty-something years, and the world is destroyed."

Chal's expression sank. "You mean… the Antichrist destroys the world?"

Ayisha nodded. "Yes. So it does not matter what you do to me know. In the end, we are all going to die."

"You… you are wrong!" Chal shouted. "The Antichrist is the one who was prophesied to rid the world of Christ once and for all, and set up an atheist utopia that would last a thousand years!"

"More like a thousand years of darkness," said Ayisha. "The Antichrist will deceive millions of people into worshipping him and the False Prophet. But in the end, his actions will do more harm than good."

Chal covered his ears. "Shut up! I have heard enough. I am scheduling your execution for ten o'clock tomorrow morning." Then he opened up the door and said, "Take her back to the cell."

Two guards came into the interrogation room and unbound Ayisha from the chair. Then they took her out into the hall and threw her back in the cell.

Ayisha decided she would not sleep when night came. What was the point? It was around 10:30 AM now; by this time tomorrow she would literally have eternity to sleep. It was a strange thing; every passing minute seemed to grow slower and slower, now that she knew the exact time she was going to die. Reality seemed to grow sharper as well. She began to feel every bruise on her body, even though they were healing quickly. She started to notice how good it felt to breath from her diaphragm. She wondered what had become of Parveen and the rest of the SJWs. Well, they weren't technically part of a terrorist organization, so they must be fine. They probably were out of jail by now. But Ayisha was a Christian. And not only was she a Christian, she was a member of the organization that killed three of the most powerful men in the world. Surely, they would not change their minds about killing her, especially not after she tried to shoot their king. She knelt down and prayed that she could somehow be spared, and if not, that her death be painless.

 _It is 6:30 AM in Soleanna Castle Town, Eurasia_

Officer Reuben was at the door of the castle, still sad about having lost his partner. He was confronting the guards.

"Goy, I'm going to ask you this only once. Did you either of yous see anybody in this town last night?"

"Officer, I'm on morning duty," replied the guard on the right. "It was Fabio and Guido who were doing the night shift."

"May I see this 'Fabio' and 'Guido'?"

"I believe they are in their quarters. Asleep."

"Then you can wake them up and bring them out here."

The guard pulled out a radio and spoke into it: "Fabio, Guido, wake up. The police are here."

A groggy voice answered, "We _are_ the police, Pietro. Let us get back to sleep."

"As your captain, I command you to come out here at once."

"Fine. Give us a minute."

The three awkwardly stood at the front door of the castle, waiting for the two to show up. They kept glancing at one another, then glancing away.

The guard on the left did a fake cough. "So, where you from?" he said to Reuben.

"I was an officer at the Guantanamo Bay concentration camps," he replied.

"Panem?"

"Yeah, but it was called District 1 back then."

"Ah. Yes, they changed the name of that place a couple days ago. The king, too. How do you like King Donald Trump?"

Reuben shrugged. "He's great. A friend of Israel is a friend of mine. You got a new king too, right? Whadda you think of King Vladimir Putin?"

"He's fine, he's fine."

Fabio and Guido came out of the castle. "Now then," said Reuben, "I'm Officer Reuben. I'm investigating the whereabouts of a terrorist organization called the Tribulation Force." He held up a photograph of a white man's face. He had slightly long, dirty blonde hair and amber eyes. He also had a patchy goatee. "This man stole the Scepter of Darkness from Kingdom Valley yesterday afternoon."

"'Stole'?" said Fabio. "Nah, you got it all wrong. The Her Majesty wanted them to bring her the relic."

"And did you see him in this town last night?"

"Sure. He took the Princess on a mission or something."

"You just let him take the Princess away? Did he tell you where he was going?"

Fabio paused. "Well, no, he -"

"Listen to me," demanded Reuben. "This is a matter of international security. Reverend David Hill is one of the most dangerous men in the world right now. And you two let the Princess just run away with him to an unspecified location. Therefore, you have failed your sacred duty to protect the Soleanna Royal Family at all costs.

"So here's what I'm going to do: First, I'm going to ask the two of you to place your rifles down on the ground in front of you. Next, I'm going to ask you to turn around and place your hands on that wall behind you."

The guards did as he said. He produced two pairs of handcuffs and went over to put them on the two. "And then, I'm going to place the two of you under arrest for neglect of duty. You have the right to remain silent." He cuffed them, then he laughed. "Nah, I'm just kidding. Goyim don't have human rights."

He walked them from the front of the castle over to his hover car. Then, with the two of them in the backseat, he drove off into the sky.

 _The skies above the Atlantic Ocean_

David pressed a button on his communicator. "Jude? It's David. We have completed our mission in Soleanna."

He heard Judes voice. "I must ask you, Pastor. What exactly _was_ your mission in Soleanna?"

"Long story short, we had to get the Princess and her magic wand or something and bring them back to Panem for the animals. Apparently she's the only one who can help us get Jesus back."

"'Get Jesus back'?" said Jude, confused. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that literally," replied David. "The Bible said that one day the Messiah would return one day to save the world. Princess Elise can make that happen. Somehow."

"That is wonderful, Pastor!" said Jude. "We are in Kyoto right now. We have found Josh, and we have made peace with the king of this district. Emperor Akihito has agreed to make Christianity legal here. Therefore, our next mission is to find out what happened to Ayisha. In a moment we will be heading off to New Delhi. I pray your mission is successful, David."

"Likewise, Jude. See you."

 _Kyoto, Laponia_

Jude pressed a button on his communicator. His airship was directly above the city hall, with a rope ladder hanging out of the door. "Alright, guys, let us be blowing this, ah, 'pop stand'." The other Tribulation Force members grabbed onto the ladder as well (except Silver, of course, who just levitated to the airship). It was slowly reeled back into the ship. The Japanese people waved at them and cheered " _Arigato!"_

With everybody on the ship, Jude punched the coordinates of New Delhi into the control panel. The ship blasted off into the southwest. Unbeknownst to Jude, he had less than 24 hours left to find Ayisha.

 _13 hours later, Guantanamo Bay (2:30 PM)_

Reuben landed his hovercar in the field outside the barracks. He turned around in his seat and saw Fabio and Guido snuggled next to each other, fast asleep. He slapped them both across the face. "Wake up, goyim! You two are going to hard labor!"

Two Jewish guards came up next to the back doors of the hovercar and threw Fabio and Guido out. Then they marched them over to the station for sterilizing.

Fabio and Guido were forced to strip down to their underpants and then sprayed with some sort of pesticide. They were given striped prison uniforms that included pants, a shirt, a cap, and boots and white gloves for working.

The barber showed no mercy on the guards' hair. Within minutes their slick, wavy hair had been reduced to a few millimeters of head stubble. Fabio cried, "No! What have you done to my beautiful hair?" He started picking up clumps off the tile floor and tried sticking them back on his head to no avail. Guido put a hand on his shoulder as he was bent over on the floor.

"I'm sorry, Fabio. But this is our life now. Once the highest officers in the Royal Guard, reduced to a couple of lowly jailbirds."

One of the Jewish guards came back in with a sledgehammer and a pickaxe. "Get up, goyim!" he shouted. Fabio and Guido stood at attention. The guard handed them the heavy tools. "Now get out there and break stones! The state needs gravel to pave more roads!"

Fabio and Guido dashed outside and got to work.

 _It is 12:30 PM in South Park, Panem_

David and Amy were very tired. They had been awake in the pilot's seats all night. Now they were finally landing in Airport Hilton. Obviously, they would still have to hike back into the mountains where they had found the stable with all the animals in it. But they were at least happy their mission was almost done. David decided he would sleep about a day when he finally got back to the airship. Then again, by that time, Jesus would have already returned to carry him and all the other Saints in the world to heaven, which was an event he really didn't want to sleep through.

Amy looked in the seat behind her. Somehow, Mina and Elise managed to fall asleep, even though they were in the most uncomfortable position possible. They must have been tired, too. She shook them both awake.

"Mina. Elise. Wake up, we're about to land."

The two girls yawned and tried to stretch, but couldn't, as the cockpit was too small.

"I can't feel my legs," said Mina.

"Sorry," Elise apologized.

"Beware," said Amy, "I'm not very good at landing. It might be a little bumpy."

And bumpy it was. The nose of the plane was tilted down too far, causing the plane to bounce up and down as it hit the runway. Meanwhile, David made the landing almost perfectly.

The planes came to a complete stop on the runway. The cockpits opened up and everybody got out. Mina, of course, needed some help, as her legs were numb and wobbly.

"You never told me you were a pilot, Pastor," said Amy. "How'd you land so easily?"

David shrugged. "I prayed, and God showed me how."

The five of them snuck out of the airport and back into town. This time, they decided to wave down a taxicab instead of an Uber.

"Where to?" the cab driver asked when David stepped inside.

David brought up a holographic map of the town on his watch. He pointed to where they needed to go.

"Huh. Neat trick. Is it just you, or…?"

"There are four others."

"Okay, well, one of y'all's gotta stand."

Mina _needed_ to stand, to get her leg strength back. Elise and Mina sat in the back seats on either side of Mina, who was standing through the opening in the roof. Martin had to squeeze in behind Mina's legs. David was the only one who felt he had plenty of room, as he was sitting in the passenger seat.

A few minutes later, they arrived at the forest they had come from. "You sure this is the place you need to be? There ain't nothin' here but trees."

David nodded. "We're sure. Thanks for _actually taking us to our destination_."

"Whaddaya think I am, an Uber driver?" said the driver. "Take care."

The five climbed out of the cab, and it sped away. The five were now standing before the wintery forest. "This is it?" said Elise. "This is where this important mission is?"

"This is it," David replied. "We just need into these mountains, and the animals will do the rest."

"Animals? What are you talking about?"

"You have to see it to believe it."

Elise naively agreed to carry on with the mission. What did she have to lose? Besides, she needed to find out what they needed the Scepter of Darkness for.

The five of them started into the snowy brush. The vegetation was not particularly thick, but there was no real path that led to where the stable was. They had gone several hundred feet from the road when Martin had a strange feeling. It was like the feeling that he had felt before taking a big test he wasn't prepared for, or having done something wrong and expected his father to lash out on him. It was a feeling in his stomach, a feeling of impending doom. It was also a feeling of loneliness, like there was not a single person in the world but himself (and in this case, his four companions). It was like they were abandoned on a planet about to be struck by an asteroid.

Martin found his only comfort was the ability to turn around and still see the road, albeit slowly shrinking, slowly being engulfed by the vegetation they passed. That road was a sign of civilization, and a sign that they could just give up at any time and turn back. Which was exactly what Martin wanted to do. And somehow, he knew, once the road disappeared completely, there would be no turning back. He stopped, dead in his tracks and turned around. David looked back at him.

"What's up, Martin?" David called.

"I want to go back," said Martin.

"Why?"

"I am scared. I have feeling we should go back."

David walked back to Martin. "Do you think it's you? Or God?"

Martin shrugged. "I do not know. I cannot tell difference."

David looked to the side. "Sometimes I can't either. Why don't you just pray? God is the Comforter."

"Okay."

"Pastor! Aren't you going to lead the way?" called Mina from a higher elevation.

David jogged back up to where the women were. Martin prayed while he walked, slow and alone. Suddenly he heard a voice say his name. His Chinese name, not 'Martin'. He stopped walking again. "Who are you?" Martin said aloud.

The voice replied to him in Chinese. "I AM WHO I AM."

Martin now spoke to the voice in Chinese. "Are you… Highest Emperor [God]?"

"You ask, yet you know. You seek, yet I AM before you. You knock, yet the door is open."

"Father, I am scared. Why?"

"I AM the LORD. I AM He who tells every storehouse of rain and snow where it should open, where every lightning bolt should strike, and where every star should fall. And I AM He who has declared from the very beginning when the Son shall return, alas, He is not to return in this hour. Yet, your brethren attempt to hasten His return."

"Can you not warn them, Father?"

"My people are destroyed from a lack of understanding. They have shut their ears to my instruction. Therefore, you will warn them of My Words."

"Of course, Father. Will they heed me?"

"The will of their hearts is theirs only to keep, and Mine only to know. It will not change, should you know it or know it not."

The voice stopped. Martin ran after them. They had made surprising distance.

"Wait, guys!" he shouted. "Stop!"

They did so, but they did not face him. Martin ran as fast as he could up the steep hill. By the time he got to the top, he was so out of breath he couldn't even muster the words he needed to say.

"It's okay, Martin," David said. "We're here!"

Martin looked up and saw the glade where the stable was. The critters were sitting outside the stable, right where they had been before. But this time they had a campfire. For some reason, they also had what looked like a pile of large rocks behind the campfire that was flat on the top, like a table.

"Well, it's been two days now," said Beavery, warming his paws by the fire. "I'm afraid our four friends must be never comin' back."

The other animals sighed.

"Wait a minute!" cried Chickadee-y, flapping her wings excitedly. "Look!"

The critter were thrilled when they saw their friends in the midst of the pine trees. They got up immediately and stood in a crowd before them.

"It's our friends!" cried Beary. "And you brought us the Princess!"

Elise knelt down beside the animals. "Hi there," she said, waving.

"And I have the Scepter of Darkness," said David, handing it to Squirrely. Squirrelly took it in his mouth.

Squirrely ran with it back onto the cobblestone table and held the Scepter over his head with his paw. "Hooray!" he shouted. "Now we can finally bring the Messiah back! **HAIL SATAN!** "

The animals all echoed, " _HAIL, SATAN!"_ Then they all picked up Elise and carried her to the table.

"Wait, what?" said Mina. "What are you doing?"

"We're going to summon our Messiah, the god of time, light, and the sun!" said Squirrely, helping the other critters lift Elise onto the table. "We're going to do it by forcing the Princess to cry out, releasing the Flames of Disaster from inside of her!"

"What?!" Elise screamed. "No! My father warned me -"

"Hold up," David said, inches closer, "We thought you meant you were going to summon Jesus! The Son of God?"

"Nope!" replied Deery. "We're going to summon the Solaris Luciferius, the Son of Almighty Satan! And it's all thanks to you!"

Rabbity brought a gallon-sized can of gasoline from the stable and poured it on the fire while Beary threw more logs in. The small campfire soon turned into a blazing bonfire. Meanwhile, the animals put ropes around Elise's wrists and ankles, preventing her from escaping.

"We gotta save Elise!" shouted Amy. She ran with David and Mina to the cobblestone table, which they now realized was an altar.

Squirrelly pulled out a copy of Codex Gigas and started reading the spell that would summon Satan. When he did so, his eyes started glowing read and his voice turned all low and demonic. "NEMA! REVEH ROF, EEROLG ETH DNA, REWOP ETH DNA, MODGNIK ETH SIH NITHE ROF…"

Racoony pulled out a sharp knife with a blade that looked like flames. He looked like he was about to stab Elise, so Amy leapt at him and tackled him. Racoony stabbed her in the side with the knife. Amy cried out in pain, blood quickly rushing out of her torso.

"Sorry I had to do that, Miss Amy," said Racoony, "but this ritual can't be interrupted! We really can't play wrestle right now!"

Amy wasn't listening. She was in too much pain. She was keeled over in the snow, which was quickly turning red.

Mina knelt down beside her and tore her sleeve right off. It wasn't much, but it was enough to stop the bleeding. "I'll take care of Amy," Mina said to David. "You save the Princess!"

"LIVEE MORF SU REVILLED TUB NOISHAYTPMET OOTNI TON SUH DEEL SUS TSHAIGA SAPSERT TAHT YETH…"

Racoony plunged the knife deep into Elise's chest, sending blood squirting out. Elise's body went into a mad fit of pain, but it was not enough to stop herself from crying out. He worked the knife down, between her breasts, down the belly, and stopped right between the legs.

David punched the racoon right in his furry face, making him drop the knife and fall to the ground. "You little beasts!" David yelled, pinning Racoony to the ground. "You let Elise go right now!"

"It's okay, David," Racoony replied. "The ritual is nearly finished. There's no going back!"

David looked up at the altar. A tornado of flames was arising from the cavity in Elise's torso, growing larger and larger. Squirrely read the last part of the Satanic spell:

"VIGRAWF EU ZA SESAPSERT RUA SUH VIGRAWF DERB ILAID RUA YED SITH SUH VIG NEVEH NI SI ZA THRE NI NUD EEB LIW EYTH MUCK MODNGIK EYTH MAIN EYTH EEB DWOHLAH NEVAH NI TRA CHIOO. RETHARF RUA!" Upon reading the last words, Squirrely smashed the Scepter of Darkness upon the altar. A black, gooey liquid crawled out of the broken Scepter and spiraled up the flaming tornado.

The sky went dark. There were flashes of lightning and rolls of thunder, as the flames and the goo started mingling together. The tornado started glowing brighter and brighter, until it was so bright that it was impossible to look at without going blind. The animals and people all averted their eyes. When the light died down, there was not a tornado, but a creature.

The creature was about 20 meters tall. It a hawk-like, skeletal apparition made of light. It had a piece above it's core resembling an upper torso with a curve behind the neck, and a lower body that resembles a stalactite. It also had two palmless arms not connected to it's body at it's shoulders, each with three fingers. It wore three cyan, rocky-looking shells, two of which covered each of it's forearms. The third covered it's chest are and core, and had a figure on top that resembled an eagle head with glowing yellow eyes and antlers. Additionally, it had a ring with six triangular pieces floating at the edges, resembling a sun on it's back. It floated above the altar where the now-dead Princess lay.

David had seen this creature somewhere before. Where had it been? He thought very hard. Then he realized: It was the same creature whose white silhouette appeared on the flag of Soleanna, the eagle-like one. It was the same creature he had seen in his nightmare a few nights ago, with the dark aura, the demonic voice, and surrounded by tuna melts. "I should have known it all along," David whispered, terrified at the creature before him.

"What? What is it, David?" Mina asked, still kneeling by Amy.

"It's him. The god of Soleanna. He's the Antichrist."

(TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 5)


End file.
